Hope in the fight against vancomycin-resistant enterococcus, a leading cause of nosocomial illness in the United States. The track which is based on the modification of a drug used in glaucoma could lead to the creation of a new treatment making it possible to avoid thousands of deaths.
- A research team has developed a drug to treat vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE), an antibiotic-resistant bacterium responsible for nosocomial infections.
- To do this, they modified an old drug and shaped it so that the molecules only attack vancomycin-resistant enterococcus in specific places in the human body.
Can an old drug cure a nosocomial disease? This is the bet that seems to have been won by an American research team from Purdue University (Indiana, United States). In a study published on July 28 in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistryteams from This university’s College of Pharmacy and College of Veterinary Medicine show how they’ve improved a scaffold of molecules to fight vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE), a leading cause of hospital-acquired infections in the United States. Each year, these organisms infect 20,000 people in the United States, and 10% of them cause death.
To fight against these “super-bacteria”, resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin, these scientists have created molecules specially shaped to destroy or contain them. To do this, they modified a drug that has been used for more than 80 years to treat glaucoma, congestive heart failure and certain other health problems. “The potency of these molecules and the ability to modify their properties so that they target VRE in different parts of the body made this project exciting.assures Daniel Flaherty assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology. I believe our discovery could help change the way people treat VRE in the future.“
A new drug against antibiotic resistance
A public health issue since antibiotic resistance makes certain infections intractable. However, according to Mohamed Seleem, professor of microbiology and co-director of the study, the antibiotics currently on the market destroy too many different bacteria at once. “These antibiotics can also destroy good bacteriaregrets the microbiology researcher. Then someone can develop “Clostridium difficile”, also known as “C. diff”, which kills about 30,000 people each year in the United States. Scientists around the world are working on better solutions, but I think we are a long way from seeing the proliferation of narrow-spectrum antibiotics on the market.“
However, he believes, like his colleague, that their modified drug overcomes this type of problem. “We can form molecules whose purpose will be to treat deadly systemic VRE infections, or, through manipulation of its properties, shape them so that they form an enclosure of molecules that only develops in the gastrointestinal tract. -intestinal to reduce VRE colonizationrejoices Daniel Flaherty. By crossing multiple disciplines at Purdue University, we were able to improve the effectiveness of this drug 600 times over earlier treatments.“They also ensure in their study that they can only target VRE as well as restrict their action to the systemic circulation. [circulation sanguine entre le cœur et les organes, NDLR] or in the gastrointestinal tract, where all VRE infections originate. 1 in 20 hospitalized patients contract a nosocomial infection in France. 4,000 people die from it, in France, each year.
-1604055688.jpg "Nosocomial infections: the floor of hospitals would be a paradise for bacteria")
