Posted on 07/04/2013 10:28:37 PM PDT by neverdem
The cyclodextrin can block the Wza pore and prevent E. coli from suiting up © NPGUK researchers have found a way to weaken the molecular armour of Escherichia coli to allow the host's immune system to attack and kill the pathogen. The discovery could pave the way for new antibiotic drugs that make it harder for pathogenic bacteria to develop resistance.
Antibiotic resistance is one of the world's most pressing public health concerns. As bacteria quickly mutate to become resistant, the effectiveness of antibiotic drugs aimed at current targets are diminishing. An alarming trend in recent years is the emergence of superbugs that have developed resistance to multiple antibiotics.
A team led by Ben Davis and Hagan Bayley at the University of Oxford, UK, has come up with a potential solution by targeting E. coli’s first line of defence – its capsular polysaccharide layer (CPS). The CPS is the outermost protective layer found in many gram-negative bacteria and protects bacteria from the host’s immune system. As yet, no one has developed a drug that can target this bacterial armour.
'If you go after the CPS itself there is loads of this armour so it's hard to hit and even if you do it just keeps piping out,' explains Davis. 'We reasoned that we should hit the piping mechanism – that way you wouldn't hit the CPS directly but the way that it gets out.'
Their approach targets the protein Wza that forms pores in the CPS. Ordinarily, the pores act as channels to allow a polysaccharide called K30 to be piped to form the CPS. The team set out to find a molecule that mimics K30 and can bind to Wza to block the pores, and discovered a cyclodextrin that worked well.
Cyclodextrins could be a novel way to target drug-resistant bacteria © NPGBy blocking the pores and stripping E. coli of its CPS, the team showed that antibodies can kill the bacteria by binding to an underlying layer of lipopolysaccharides. They hope that this will also work in other bacteria that express Wza.
'Without CPS these bugs are in real trouble and it shows what a great target this could be,’ says Davis. 'It doesn’t need to penetrate so deeply into the bug like some antibiotics and it also means that the compound itself doesn't kill so any resistance will not be down to the compound alone.'
'The authors have shown that, once the export of sugars to form its capsule is blocked with their compound, E. coli becomes more susceptible to the killing action of complement. This is interesting and novel, but its early days,’ cautions David Livermore, an antibiotic resistance expert at the University of East Anglia, UK. 'The obvious question is: “Does it work in vivo as well as in vitro?”'
L Kong et al, Nat. Chem., 2013, DOI: 10.1038/nchem.1695
Not if no lab is interested any more because that horrible profit motive has been taken away.
It really takes dedication to be as dunderheaded as our present government.
Won’t bacteria just develop a new shield?
Finally, I was able to scream at my brother the name of the bacteria he had on his feet.
That’s the billion dollar question.
E. coli isn't much of a pathogen.
This story is important because of the potential effect of the new treatment on other types of gram-negative bacteria, many of which are indeed bad news.
In fact, E. coli is so widely used for experiment partially because it isn't much of a danger to people.
Not all E. coli is bad. We depend on E. coli to make vitamin K in our gut. A few serotypes are serious human pathogens.
a tsp of that in a juice glass of warm water - almost immediately kills the bad bugs - for me anyway.
Not prescribing anything, so you NSA goons can back off - I'm just saying what “works for me.” - simple and natural - no new 'miracle drugs' that later prove to be dangerous in themselves...
That's the odd thing about all this, Liberals aren't anything if they aren't in power over others, vindictive, and enslaved to their selfish desires. Those three key elements encompass who and what Liberals are, and if they don't posses them, they are nothing but little pieces of humanity lost on the earth.
These drug/methods/discoveries won't be available to anyone, no matter how much money or power they have. One only has to think back in history, at any time in the past, no matter how much power or money they had, even the Pharaohs themselves couldn't cure diseases we don't give second thought to today.
And yet the Liberals push for it, as though the momentary win is worth any price, even their own lives.
That alone is circumstantial proof that Liberalism is nothing more than a grand conspiracy, headed up by none other than Satan himself.
Thanks for the link.
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