New publications
New antibiotics do not cause "habituation" of bacteria will be able to act on them even in a dormant state
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
A research group at Northeastern University in Boston, led by Kim Lewis, managed to invent a completely new medical drug that differs from all known drugs to date. Its main difference is that bacteria will not be able to develop resistance to it. Moreover, the drug affects not only active bacteria, but also those that are in a latent, i.e. dormant, state. All antibiotics known today are unable to act on dormant bacteria precisely because of their inactivity.
According to the authors, their invention will become a good weapon in the fight against bacteria that have developed resistance to drugs.
Experts around the world have long been pondering the problem of bacterial mutations and their adaptation to antibiotics. Scientists are confident that the development and introduction of new antibacterial drugs to the pharmaceutical market is vitally important because "outdated" versions of antibiotics are no longer up to the task.
The main substance of the new drug is a special peptide ADEP-4, which activates protease, responsible for the breakdown of bacterial proteins. During the research, ADEP-4 was added to Staphylococcus aureus, after a while all the harmful bacteria died.
After the team decided to enhance the action of ADEP-4 with rifampicin (an antibiotic), they created a stronger drug that was used to treat a lab mouse that was infected with staph. The mouse turned out to be completely healthy.
According to experts, bacteria have virtually no chance of adapting to the new type of antibiotic. In order to develop resistance to the drug, bacteria will need to abandon the ClpP protease, but without this enzyme, the correct functioning of the cell is basically impossible. Experts are planning to conduct research on a group of volunteers in the very near future; if the tests are successful (which scientists have no doubt), the drug will receive a license and will be launched into serial production.
In the modern world, antibiotics occupy a certain place among medicines. Most diseases are treated with antibacterial agents. There are several groups of antibiotics, differing in the principle of action and the final result on individual groups of microorganisms. Over the past decades, many new generations of antibiotics have been developed, because over time, any antibacterial agent becomes relatively unusable due to the development of resistance to them by bacteria. As a result, the treatment of infectious diseases is becoming increasingly difficult, and scientists are forced to develop new complex drugs, in some cases very expensive.
Research aimed at combating existing infections is being conducted in a variety of directions. Recently, a group of scientists from Holland managed to create a "glowing" antibiotic that helps detect infections in the body at different stages of the disease.