New antibiotic kills off persistent infections

Some background, based on quick research, not personal knowledge, so please correct if anything&#x27;s wrong:<p>This class of antibiotics, ADEP, was discovered as a naturally produced substance isolated from the bacteria <i>Streptomyces hawaiiensis</i> in 1985 (<i>Streptomyces</i> has been a fertile source of naturally occurring antibiotics). After some promising results, there was work on synthetically synthesizing it and producing &quot;optimized&quot; synthetic variants. ADEP4 is one of those, and was reported in a paper published in 2005. There&#x27;s a short 1-page summary of that work in <i>Nature Reviews Drug Discovery</i> 4: 957. See page 19 of this PDF, article &quot;Peptide power&quot;: <a href="http://journals2005.pasteur.ac.ir/NR/4%2812%29.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals2005.pasteur.ac.ir&#x2F;NR&#x2F;4%2812%29.pdf</a><p>There&#x27;s a lot of work trying to understand its mechanism, e.g. here&#x27;s one open-access paper that also has some background: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2955292/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC2955292&#x2F;</a><p>Here&#x27;s the paper discussed in the linked article, unfortunately paywalled, but with an abstract available that&#x27;s actually a good summary: <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12790.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;nature&#x2F;journal&#x2F;vaop&#x2F;ncurrent&#x2F;full&#x2F;natu...</a>

The most understated portion of the article is that there is a method discovered that can kill biofilms. The discovery of new antibiotics and delivery techniques leaves me less optimistic for long-term change in the availability of life-saving antibiotics. I suspect bacteria can, and will, evolve around almost any mitigating technique we develop.<p>Yet I&#x27;m optimistic, because tools that crack biofilms are a new are of development and promise hope for exploring new attacks on bacteria. Current methods of biofilm dispersal are application of strong acids and bases or an autoclave. You can&#x27;t treat a hospital room with an autoclave, and comprehensive treatment of a room with very strongly ionizing agents has its own risks. There are other, experimental methods, but all are worth examining.<p>I hope research like this continues.

&gt; it only works the bacteria known as gram-positives, which includes problematic bugs like Staphylococcus<p>I have had one of those for almost a decade now.<p>&gt; He hasn’t tested it in humans yet<p>How long is the road ahead before it becomes available to regular patients? Should I get my hopes up?

If this is a novel antibiotic with any therapeutic potential, please let&#x27;s outlaw feeding it to cattle by the ton.

This is an awful headline change. National Geographic&#x27;s title (Killing Sleeper Cells and Superbugs with Assassin Janitors) wasn&#x27;t very descriptive, but at least it didn&#x27;t leave room for a headline browser to take away the false conclusion that the CDC declared public health crisis of antibiotic resistance is near resolution.<p>According to the article, this new antibiotic has only been tested on mice and rats. These sort of preliminary results go bust all the time, and so I think that in this case, it&#x27;s irresponsible to fail to indicate that these are preliminary studies and that the effect hasn&#x27;t been demonstrated in humans. This could have been achieved by leaving the title the same, or by changing it to &quot;New antibiotic kills off persistent infections in rats&quot;.

Reading about new treatments gives me a kind of anxiety: drug trials are so slow and the funding models are so removed from the actual human life-saving potential, that I just am filled with fear that this stuff will get mired in bureaucracy or otherwise defunded rather than getting FDA approved. I dread the idea that someone I know to get sick and die because we&#x27;re so ploddingly slow at doing these trials.<p>For example: &quot;DRACO&quot; antivirals from MIT, were developed in 2011, and according to mouse model tests and tests on cultured human cells, is safe and effective against influenza and rhinovirus and everything else they threw at it (see <a href="http://mackinstitute.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Rider-Todd_PANACEA-Broad-Spectrum-Antiviral-Therapeutics.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mackinstitute.wharton.upenn.edu&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;20...</a> for details), and yet it could be a decade before we even try to answer questions like &quot;wait, does this cure HIV? It sounds like it might actually cure HIV&quot;

The bacteria evolving to go dormant reminds me scale insects that damaged citrus fruits. The farmers put a giant tent over every tree and gassed them. This worked at first, but after a few years the scale insects got resistant. Whenever startled, they would sit perfectly still and hold their breath for half an hour.

It&#x27;s nice to know that despite all the alarmist articles about the end of antibiotics, good progress is being made. If this works, it could completely replace traditional antibiotics. In that case, I could see dozens of new drugs in this class developed by the antibiotic companies. This would be similar to the race to develop new antidepressants, HIV drugs, and erectile dysfunction drugs. Any drug you have to take over and over again is a huge draw for the pharmaceuticals.

That&#x27;s very good news actually. If first stage trials are successful might be marketed sooner than expected. However, I didn&#x27;t read the paper, so I can&#x27;t comment on the mechanism of action which the mos interesting part of an drug. Bacteria might become resistant if this procedure becomes overused (as usual) and it would be a shame.

Very interesting research but it doesn&#x27;t mention any negatives of ADEP4. What kind of effects could it have on the human body?

I wonder if this approach will eventually be useful in eliminating Chronic Lyme Disease.

But does it kill the host as well?

can it be tested on Google+?

&gt; New antibiotic kills off persistent infections<p>Now available in hand-soap.