Researchers have found a toxin in plants that kills bacteria in a new way that they think could be imitated in the lab. This could lead to the development of a powerful new class of antibiotics. Doctors have been warning for many years that the steady rise of multidrug-resistant pathogens like E. coli now poses a dangerous threat to healthcare all over the world. Doctors have been excited about the idea of making new antibacterial drugs in this way, but they have also been warned about the risks.
In a paper that was just published in the journal Nature Catalysis, researchers from the UK, Germany, and Poland said that the newly discovered antibiotic allicin kills bacteria in a way that no other drug on the market does. According to them, this suggests that a new way could be used to fight diseases caused by bacteria.
Dmitry Ghilarov, whose research group is at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, said, “We couldn’t get any resistance to allicin in the lab.” Norwich is where you can find the John Innes Centre. One of the reasons we are really happy about it is that we think it will be hard for bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics made from allicin.
Leaf scald is a terrible disease that can happen to sugarcane. It is caused by a bacterium called Xanthomonas albilineans, which is a plant pathogen. This plant pathogen makes allicin. Albicidin is used by the pathogen to hurt the plant. However, it has been known for a long time that allicin is also a very effective way to kill bacteria.
“The problem was that we didn’t know how allicin killed bacteria at the time. Because of this, we couldn’t use it to make new antibiotics because they might have caused all kinds of problems in the human body, Ghilarov said. “At the time, the problem was that we didn’t know how allicin killed bacteria.” “Before we could do that, we had to figure out how it killed bacteria,” the researchers said. “We have now reached that goal.”
Ghilarov and his team worked with scientists from the Technische Universität Berlin in Germany and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, to use several cutting-edge methods to figure out how allicin kills.
Ghilarov says, “Now that we know how allicin is put together, we can make changes to it to improve its effectiveness and pharmacological properties.” We think this is one of the most promising new possibilities for antibiotics that have been found in a long time. Even in low concentrations, it is very effective against pathogenic bacteria, even those that are resistant to commonly used antibiotics like fluoroquinolones. It is also very effective against bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics like fluoroquinolones.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that antibiotic resistance has become one of the biggest threats to health, food security, and development around the world. Bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics because they have been used too much. This has led to the growth of microorganisms that are harder to get rid of, which in turn has led to higher medical costs, longer hospital stays, and higher death rates.
A recent study found that this problem causes the deaths of more than 3,500 people every single day, and it is expected to directly cause the deaths of more than 1.2 million people in 2019.
Professor Tony Maxwell, who also works at the John Innes Centre, says, “One problem is that pharmaceutical companies don’t do enough research and development on new antibiotics.” This is something that Prof. Maxwell said. There used to be a lot of new compounds on the market all the time, but that is no longer the case. Since fewer big drug companies are working on antibiotics, fewer new antibiotics are being sent to and approved by western drug regulators. The problem is that you can no longer make money from antibiotics, which is a worry. On the other hand, there is no better way to treat a bacterial illness than with an antibiotic, so this work, which shows us how allicin works and opens up a whole new range of medicines, has to be good news. Antibiotics are the best way to treat diseases caused by bacteria. It could be years before we have versions that can be used for therapy, but this does show that we could have a new weapon one day.
Ghilarov agreed with this point of view. To get things going, the government needs to get involved, just like it did when vaccines were made. Either it needs to offer incentives or set up a special institute for antibiotics research.
Rosy