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A brand new examine from Emory College addresses the rising world disaster of antibiotic-resistant infections. Many of those drug-resistant micro organism are unfold by means of hospitals, and there are few antibiotics obtainable for remedy.
The examine, revealed in PNAS, appears to be like at a specific bacterium known as Acinetobacter baumannii, which is extremely infectious, unfold largely in hospitals and sometimes infects immunocompromised sufferers.
The researchers employed a wholly new technique to establish weaknesses particular to resistant micro organism after which goal these weaknesses with an alternate drug. They discovered that fendiline, a drug that acts as a calcium channel blocker and previously used to deal with coronary heart arrhythmia, kills the bacterium by focusing on the important lipoprotein trafficking pathway, which is weakened in antibiotic-resistant micro organism.
“It’s critical that we find more and better therapeutics that can target these antibiotic-resistant infections which affect patients on ventilators, those with deep soft tissue infections, and the immunocompromised,” says Philip Relatively, Ph.D., corresponding writer on the paper and professor within the Emory College Faculty of Drugs.
“This novel finding repurposes an existing drug, exploits a newly identified vulnerability in an antibiotic-resistant bacterium, and opens doors for developing new antibiotics targeting similar pathways,” says Jennifer Colquhoun, Ph.D., first writer and analysis scientist at Emory College.
The invention that fendiline can selectively kill drug-resistant micro organism suggests a fast-track potential for treating infections which might be presently tough or inconceivable to handle with current antibiotics.
Since fendiline is already FDA-approved, there’s potential for faster scientific trials and deployment in treating critical hospital-acquired infections, significantly in immunocompromised sufferers. The drug selectively targets the precise bacterium, leaving the wholesome micro organism in a affected person’s intestine flora intact.
Extra info:
Jennifer M. Colquhoun et al, Repurposing a drug to punish carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2423650122
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A repurposed coronary heart arrhythmia drug exhibits promise in killing antibiotic-resistant micro organism (2025, June 10)
retrieved 10 June 2025
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