Making Progress in the Battle Against Superbugs
taylorvich writes:
https://newatlas.com/medical/antibiotic-polymer-family-kills-superbugs-resistance/
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are poised to become a global health concern in the coming decades. In the race to develop new weapons, scientists from Texas A&M have created a novel family of antibacterial polymers that can kill 'superbugs' in a way they can't evolve resistance to.
...
Bacteria are adaptable little pests, and so they quickly evolved defenses against antibiotics. Scientists in turn developed new ones, but of course bacteria soon evolved resistance to those too, in a cycle that lasted decades. Unfortunately, in recent years the tides have begun to turn in favor of bacteria - we're running out of new drugs, but they're not running out of evolution. Our last lines of defense are beginning to fail, and there are now strains of superbugs that are immune to anything and everything we can throw at them.We need brand new tactics if we're going to prevent a global health crisis, and antibiotic polymers are a decent step in that direction. These synthetic molecules latch onto and disrupt the outer membranes of bacteria, in a form of attack that the bugs can't develop resistance to.
In the new study, the Texas A&M team developed new polymers that are more customizable, allowing them to be tuned to fight superbugs even more effectively. The key is a catalyst called AquaMet, which can handle a high concentration of charges and is water-soluble. That charge tolerance is important - antibacterial polymers work because their positive charge attracts them to the negative charge of the bacteria.
Journal Reference:
Sarah N. Hancock, Nattawut Yuntawattana, Emily Diep, and Quentin Michaudel, Ring-opening metathesis polymerization of N-methylpyridinium-fused norbornenes to access antibacterial main-chain cationic polymers, PNAS, 120 (51) e2311396120 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2311396120
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.