A plant toxin has emerged as a strong candidate for developing new antibiotics.
The antibiotic, called albicidin, is hailed as one of the most exciting new antibiotic candidates in many years.
A research group led by Dr Dmitry Ghilarov at the John Innes Centre in Norwhich said that albicidin attacks bacteria in a completely different way to existing drugs.
“We believe this is one of the most exciting new antibiotic candidates in many years. It has extremely high effectiveness in small concentrations and is highly potent against pathogenic bacteria – even those resistant to the widely used antibiotics such as fluoroquinolones," Technology Networks, a scientific news publication, quoted Dr Ghilarov as saying.
It has been known for some time that albicidin is highly effective at killing bacteria including E. coli and S. aureus. These superbugs, notorious for their growing resistance to existing antibiotics, have prompted a vital need for effective new drugs, Technology Networks noted.
“We could not elicit any resistance towards albicidin in the laboratory. That is why we are really excited – because we think it will be very hard for bacteria to evolve resistance against albicidin-derived antibiotics,” Dr Ghilarov said.
Albicidin is produced by a bacterial plant pathogen called Xanthomonas albilineans that triggers a devastating disease, known as leaf scald, in sugarcane. The pathogen uses albicidin to attack the plant, but it was also found, several decades ago, that it was highly effective at killing bacteria.
The next step for this research is to engage with academic and industrial collaborators, and to seek funding to take the research forward to human clinical trials. This could lead to the development of an urgently needed new class of antibiotics in the face of a global threat of antimicrobial resistance, AMR.