Australia has created a replacement for antibiotics
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Recently, scientists around the world are concerned that the causative agents of infectious diseases are becoming more resistant to existing antibiotics. To correct the situation, a graduate student of one of the Australian universities, who developed a polymer peptide, tried.
25-year-old Shu Lam has already experienced a new way of treatment on laboratory rodents. The new polymer showed efficacy in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which according to the UN version are today a global threat to public health. Every year, due to bacteria resistant to antibiotics , about a million people die, and according to experts' forecasts, after about 30 years, due to antibacterial resistance, 10 times more people will die.
A young girl, a graduate student at the Australian University of Australia, decided to deal with the situation and developed a polymer peptide, which is a structure of the same type of proteins. During the research, Shu Lam established that the new peptide is able to fight with various bacteria, destroying the cell membranes. According to Lam, the new remedy destroys 6 dangerous bacteria, while the peptide does it on its own, without additional antibiotics.
She also noted that peptides showed good effectiveness in fighting various bacterial infections, including diseases caused by bacteria resistant to modern antibiotics. Simultaneously with high efficiency, peptides do not harm healthy cells of the body and are generally safer in comparison with antibiotics.
About the invention Shu Lam wrote in one of the famous scientific publications - Nature Microbiology, the development was called SNAPP. As already mentioned, testing of a new drug has been conducted so far only in a laboratory with an animal model, but the fact that the drug can be effective against a person already gives hope that in the near future, mankind will not die from infectious diseases that are still a couple dozens of years ago were successfully treated.
According to the scientific adviser Lam, the peptides developed by his student are quite large in size, so they simply can not penetrate healthy cells, which is what distinguishes Lam from the research of other specialists who worked in this direction.
The experiments showed that pathogens of dangerous diseases died under the action of peptide, in addition, the following generations of bacteria did not show the ability to withstand the proteins that make up the structure of the developed Lam peptide.
In comparison with antibiotics, polymers do not harm healthy cells, whereas antibiotics act on both bacteria and neighboring healthy cells. Peptides attack solely the pathogens of the infection, penetrating into the cell membranes and destroying them. According to a specialist from another Australian university, Lam's work shows that there are means that can more effectively and safely fight infectious diseases. But as Shu Lam herself noted, before the polymer peptides are used to treat people, it will take several years of clinical trials.
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