Groundbreaking Discovery May Lead to Stronger AntibioticsOctober 02, 2008The last decade has seen a dramatic decline in the effectiveness of antibiotics, resulting in a mounting public health crisis across the world. A new breakthrough by University of Virginia researchers provides physicians and patients a potential new approach toward the creation of less resistant and more effective antibiotics. "As bacteria become more resistant to our current classes of antibiotics, there also has been a general lack of new targets for developing novel antibiotics," says John H. Bushweller, Ph.D., who led a new study appearing in the September 26, 2008, issue of Molecular Cell. "This is a dangerous situation, but our discovery provides a starting point for a completely novel class of antibiotics, acting via a different mechanism." What Dr. Bushweller, professor of molecular physiology and biological physics, and fellow researchers at the UVA Health System and Harvard Medical School have determined is the structure of a particular integral membrane enzyme, called DsbB - one of the many proteins that reside in cell membranes. These so-called integral membrane proteins are important, because they account for roughly one-third of any genome in the human body and are the targets of more than half of all currently used drugs.
Until now, scientists have been unable to acquire much structural information about these types of proteins; yet determining a protein's structure is vital in order to understand how it functions and how it can potentially operate as a drug target. The study led by Dr. Bushweller represents the first time scientists have cracked the code required to solve a certain class of membrane protein structure by using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, the preeminent technique for determining the structure of organic compounds. This novel NMR approach now gives the scientific community a brand new platform for attempting to determine structures of other important membrane proteins. "What this means is that not only did we establish NMR spectroscopy as a potent tool for the characterization of the structure, dynamics and function of integral membrane proteins, but we also discovered that the DsbB enzyme is an exciting potential new target agent for the creation of novel antibiotics," says Dr. Bushweller. "This could give us the roadmap to an entirely new class of antibiotics." University of Virginia | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
Related Antibiotics Current Events and Antibiotics News Articles Fewer deaths with preventive antibiotic use Administering antibiotics as a preventive measure to patients in intensive care units (ICUs) increases their chances of survival. This has emerged from a study involving nearly sixthousand Dutch patients in thirteen hospitals. Is bismuth a safe medicine for the treatment peptic ulcer disease? Bismuth compounds have been used for centuries in medicine. The discovery of H. pylori in 1983 led to renewed interest in bismuth compounds, because these were found to successfully treat the infection in combination with antibiotics. MRSA pre-screening effective in reducing otolaryngic surgical infection rates Pre-operative screening of patients for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) may be an effective way to reduce infection rates following otolaryngic surgeries, according to new research published in the January 2009 issue of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery. Uncultured bacteria found in amniotic fluids of women who experience preterm births Researchers from Case Western Reserve University and Yale University have made a significant advancement in understanding the cause behind why some pregnant women suffer from inflammations in the inner womb without any signs of an infection. Arterial infusion using gabexate mesilate: Is it effective therapy for severe acute pancreatitis? Severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) remains a lethal disease. It is defined as an inflammatory process of the pancreas with possible peripancreatic tissue and multi-organ involvement inducing multi-organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) with an increased mortality rate. Viruses, start your engines! Peering at structures only atoms across, researchers have identified the clockwork that drives a powerful virus nanomotor. Because of the motor's strength--to scale, twice that of an automobile--the new findings could inspire engineers designing sophisticated nanomachines. Arterial infusion using gabexate mesilate: Is it effective therapy for severe acute pancreatitis? Severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) remains a lethal disease. It is defined as an inflammatory process of the pancreas with possible peripancreatic tissue and multi-organ involvement inducing multi-organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) with an increased mortality rate. Small molecule triggers bacterial community While bacterial cells tend to be rather solitary individuals, they are also known to form intricately structured communities called biofilms. New research lights up chronic bacterial infection inside bone A new report demonstrates how a sensitive imaging technique gives scientists the upper hand in seeking out bacteria in chronic infections. Peering inside the skull of a mouse to solve meningitis mystery NYU Langone Medical Center scientists and their collaborators at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., have discovered an unexpected cause for the fatal seizures seen in mice with viral meningitis, an infection of the central nervous system, according to a study published in the journal Nature. More Antibiotics Current Events and Antibiotics News Articles |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||