Developing a new weapon in the war against superbugs

Australian microbiologists have shown that a newly discovered natural antibiotic, teixobactin, could be effective in treating bacterial lung conditions such as tuberculosis and those commonly associated with COVID-19. 

Teixobactin was discovered in 2015 by a team led by Professor Kim Lewis at Northeastern University in Boston in 2015. His company is now developing it as a human therapeutic.

The new University of Melbourne research is the first to explain how teixobactin works in relation to the superbug Staphylococcus aureus -- also known as MRSA.

MRSA is among bacteria responsible for several difficult-to-treat infections in humans, particularly post-viral secondary bacterial infections such as COVID-19 chest infections and influenza.

See:

Maytham Hussein, John A. Karas, Elena K. Schneider-Futschik, Fan Chen, James Swarbrick, Olivia K. A. Paulin, Daniel Hoyer, Mark Baker, Yan Zhu, Jian Li, Tony Velkov. The Killing Mechanism of Teixobactin against Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus: an Untargeted Metabolomics Study. mSystems, 2020; 5 (3) DOI: 10.1128/mSystems.00077-20

Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle, Pharmaceutical Microbiology Resources (http://www.pharmamicroresources.com/)