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An antibiotic used to treat infective diarrhea could be an effective drug for a type of inflammatory bowel disease, a new study has found. Results revealed that an antibiotic called vancomycin may also be effective in treating people who have a specific type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which develops in the context of an incurable autoimmune liver disease called primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). Notably, four in five patients who participated in the study achieved remission after taking the drug as part of a clinical trial. This study is significant, as several participants with this disease had not responded to...

An ancient concoction for eye infections seems to really work. The potion, which contains cattle bile, kills the "superbug" methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, researchers at Britain's University of Nottingham report. In fact, it worked better than the current gold standard for MRSA infections of the flesh, the antibiotic vancomycin, an expert at Texas Tech University found. Now researchers are working to see just what's in the salve that kills germs so effectively. It started with a joint project by two wildly different departments at the University of Nottingham. Dr. Christina Lee, an Anglo-Saxon expert in the School of English,...

Each year, more than 2 million people in the United States get antibiotic-resistant infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 23,000 of them die. Unless breakthroughs are achieved, that toll will keep rising. If a new version of an antibiotic of last resort lives up to its promise, that date with doom may be averted. A study on this bolstered form of vancomycin by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla was released Monday. Researchers led by Dale Boger, co-chair of TSRI's Department of Chemistry, introduced three modifications to vancomycin, all lethal to...

LA JOLLA, CA – August 24, 2011 – A team of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have successfully reengineered an important antibiotic to kill the deadliest antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The compound could one day be used clinically to treat patients with life-threatening and highly resistant bacterial infections. The results were published in an advanced online issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. “[These results] have true clinical significance and chart a path forward for the development of next generation antibiotics for the treatment of the most serious resistant bacterial infections,” said Dale L. Boger, who is Richard and...

Roche, whose drug Tamiflu is in great demand as a preparation for a possible influenza pandemic, is not the only company reaping a financial windfall from a treatment for a contagious disease. And in this case, the health threat is not merely a potential one. ViroPharma, a formerly struggling biotechnology company, sells Vancocin, the only drug approved to treat Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that already kills thousands of people a year in this country and is apparently becoming more common and more deadly. The life-saving drug has turned out to be a financial lifesaver for ViroPharma which, almost by...

INDIANAPOLIS - Eli Lilly and Co. has agreed to sell U.S. rights to its antibiotic Vancocin for $116 million and a percentage of future sales through 2011. The buyer is the small, Exton-Pa.-based drug development firm ViroPharma Inc., The Indianapolis Star and The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Tuesday. ViroPharma aims to increase sales of Vancocin by promoting it for the first time in years to hospitals, where the capsule form is used to control gastrointestinal infections. Vancocin generated U.S. sales of $40 million last year. The drug's U.S. patent expired in 1988, but the antibiotic is so difficult to make that...

<p>The only thing Robert Thompson knows for certain is that his patient died. Almost everything else about Ryan Donahoe's illness remains a mystery -- and a warning. Now, five months later, the Seattle physician still asks the same question.</p> <p>How could a strong, athletic 19-year-old walk into a hospital emergency room complaining only of fever and lower back pain and seven days later end up dead?</p>