A new synthetic antibiotic that hobbles bacteria in three different ways could overcome antibiotic resistance.
The technique, which was applied to the common antibiotic vancomycin, could be used to tweak other antibiotics that have become less effective as bacteria evolve defenses against them. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls antibiotic resistance one of the greatest threats to global health. In February, the organization released a list of the 12 most-dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Two bacteria in the top five were Enterococcus faecium and Staphylococcus aureus, both of which have strains resistant to vancomycin.
These emerging vancomycin-resistant bugs are bad news, because vancomycin has historically been unaffected by the problem of resistance. The antibiotic was introduced clinically in 1958, and no cases of bacteria withstanding the drug were reported until the appearance of vancomycin-resistant Enterococci in 1987.
Vancomycin works by targeting precursors to the bacterial cell wall, preventing the cell wall from maturing. In particular, vancomycin stops bacterial cell walls from developing by sequestering the transpeptidase d-alanine–d-alanine, which catalyzes the crosslinking of the moieties that form the cell wall. The bacteria that have gained resistance to vancomycin do this by converting d-alanine–d-alanine into d-alanine–d-lactate, which vancomycin...
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