Scientists from the University of Queensland and a biotechnology company discovered a new class of antibiotics, which is a kind of synthetic sugar. And the new antibiotics can significantly decrease the drug resistance caused by bacteria, and kill them. These new antibiotics can be a powerful drug against the superbugs. What have to be mentioned is that the whole finding got inspiration from the bacteria wall formation.
Bacteria has wall and it’s composed by sugar polymers. The composition of the wall is right the entrance of this new finding. Different from the existing antibiotics like vancomycin, penicillin and many other types that target the wall of bacteria, scientists put the emphasis of the study on if it was possible to fail the wall comes into being from its forming substance. Working on this research direction, scientists found that by adding a type of modified sugar molecule which was produced by synthetic way, bacteria wall couldn’t be linked, finally bacteria were killed. That’s what the scientists had been pursuing for a long time.
The modified sugars pose no further threat to human health and they are chosen from numerous types in the kind with the ability to break the formation of the bacteria wall.
Molecules will be made into drugs with a three dimensional structure, which gives access to a variety of modified sugars with little difference in the 3D structure to meet the anti-resistance needs of many types of bacteria.
Such antibiotics are in urgent needs in various aspects of medication to against the bacteria that produce strong drug resistance and hinder treating process, especially in the sudden broken diseases like Ebola and SARSE. The application of such antibiotics will leave enough time for the research team to discovery a cure way, and will also make the treatment easier.
The research was carried out by professors from University of Queensland, Matt Cooper and Dr Johannes Zuegg, partnered by a biosciences company. The whole process and result of the research was presented in the journal of Nature Communications. Full access of the paper can be indexed at the title Carbohydrate scaffolds as glycosyltransferase inhibitors with in vivo antibacterial activity with the DOI:10.1038/ncomms8719.