Northeastern Researchers discover a new Antibiotic in Soil.

Antibiotic resistance is spreading faster than ever before. Scientists have tried multiple tactics to find ways to cure antibiotic resistance, and a team of Northeastern University researchers may have found a definitive answer in a Maine soil sample. The new antibiotic is called Teixobactin, which job is to kill pathogens. So far, in lab tests, there are no signs of resistance to the drug and even more, the properties of this compound also suggest a path towards developing antibiotics that are likely to avoid development of resistance, notes Nature Magazine and the researchers at Northeastern University led by Kim Lewis.

Uncovering science’s secret weapon of antibiotic discovery: The iChip

Let’s play a game: do you think more people have died of the Ebola virus in West Africa, or an everyday infection? Although Ebola may be a tempting answer,  bacterial and fungal infections have become exceedingly deadly over the past few years. According to the Centers for Disease Control, fewer than 9,000 people have died of Ebola in the past year, while over 2 million people in the U.S. alone have developed serious infections and at least 23,000 of those people have died as a direct result. Many others have died from other medical conditions that were further complicated by infections. 

The Search for New Treatments for Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis

            The discovery of the first antibiotics during the early stages of the 20^th century forever changed the world of medicine. Many diseases that plagued mankind for millennia were now curable with a simple course of antibiotic treatment. Despite the discovery of several novel antibiotics over the course of the century, over-prescription as well as misuse of antibiotics has led to the creation of “superbugs” that have gained resistance to most of the drugs used to treat them. This development is particularly terrifying given that fact that current drug development has not been able to keep pace with the development of resistance in many different strains of bacteria. Part of this problem stems from little interest by pharmaceutical companies to invest in R&D for these drugs because antibiotics generally end up not being very lucrative investments. Additionally, the process of moving a drug from the discovery and optimization stages to large phase 3 clinical trials takes several years and several promising drugs are often screened out during this process.