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Feds develop plan in war against antibiotic resistance

Collaborative action by federal agencies, researchers and pharmaceutical companies focuses on ways to develop new drugs and reduce antibiotic use.

By Susan J. Landers, amednews staff. March 19, 2001.

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Washington -- Bacteria top the hit list of a team of researchers from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., and the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. They are working on the development of a new drug to combat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.

The researchers are focusing on a compound called thiolactomycin, or TLM, that blocks the enzymatic action necessary for the formation of bacterial cell membranes. By preventing the development of the membrane, they believe the microbes' growth will be halted and the bacteria ultimately killed.

TLM also has the broader potential for helping to fight a host of other bacterial and parasitic infections, including staphylococcosis, streptococcosis and malaria. The hope at St. Jude, which treats children for cancer and other catastrophic diseases, is that TLM will help these young patients fend off bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics so they can marshal their strength for the fight against their cancer.

The research represents just one battlefront in a war that medicine thought it had won years ago when antibiotics were developed. But as many pathogens have become resistant to existing antibiotics, new approaches are being explored.

The St. Jude study is funded by the National Institute for AIDS and Infectious Diseases under a new challenge grant program established last year by Congress to promote collaboration among researchers from pharmaceutical companies, the government and academia. The research is "one of the most promising" studies funded so far under the $20 million initiative, said Marissa Miller, DVM, MPH, antimicrobial resistance program officer at NIAID. [...]