Posted on 08/05/2013 11:55:51 AM PDT by neverdem
A new drug candidate has shown promising signs in treating tuberculosis. The synthetic molecule is effective in mice and bears no similarity to existing TB drugs, many of which have become inadequate as drug-resistant bacterial strains have developed. If it is shown to be safe and effective in humans, it could help to combat a disease that killed 1.4 million people in 2011.
A team led by Kevin Pethe, a microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute Korea near Seoul, investigated more than 120,000 compounds over 5 years, infecting mouse immune cells called macrophages with Mycobacterium tuberculosis — the bacterium that causes TB — and observing whether candidate compounds inhibited bacterial growth. “We are able to look at infection directly inside macrophage cells, allowing us to screen a large number of chemical libraries more quickly,” says Pethe.
The tests narrowed the list of candidates down to one for further synthesis and evaluation.
Reporting in Nature Medicine1, the authors showed that the synthetic antibacterial compound has a novel mechanism of action: it inhibits the synthesis of ATP, the chemical that is used as a source of energy by most of the cell’s enzymes, and thereby blocks M. tuberculosis growth.
Subsequent tests showed the compound to be successful at treating TB in mice. The molecule belongs to a new class of synthetic chemicals with no similarities to existing drugs. This factor could make it tougher for the bacteria to develop resistance to it.
Valerie Mizrahi, a TB biologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, says the study “affirms the notion that there are new TB drug targets out there waiting to be discovered by screening diverse compound libraries. This is good news for the field and it must be celebrated”.
Next steps
Success at this stage does not guarantee that the...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Great a cure for mouse TB
Mice have the best health care.
Congressional republicans are healthy.
Mice have the best health care.
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I hope that Mice will be able to sign up for ObamaCare despite having pre-existing TB.
But seriously, this may be very good news since so many variants of drug-resistent TB are beginning to sprout up and spread.
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