Vital New Antibiotic

Teixobactin is an antibiotic which is active against pathogenic Gram-positive bacteria that have developed resistance to available approved antibiotics. The discovery was reported in January 2015. The antibiotic was discovered in a screen of uncultured bacteria grown in situ in soil using techniques developed by researchers at the Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

History

In January 2015 a collaboration of four institutes in the U.S. and Germany together with two pharmaceutical companies, reported they had discovered a new antibiotic, killing "without detectable resistance".  Teixobactin was discovered from the previously uncultured Eleftheria terrae, using the iChip technique to screen unculturable soil bacteria.

Mechanism of Activity

No resistant strains of either Staphylococcus aureus or Mycobacterium tuberculosis could be generated in vitro, even when administering sublethal doses over a period of 27 days. It is postulated that Teixobactin is more robust against mutation of the target pathogens because of its unusual antibiotic mechanism. Rather than binding to relatively mutable proteins in the bacterial cell, it binds to less mutable fatty molecules which are essential cell wall precursors.

Use in Medicine

In early 2015, human clinical trials of teixobactin were estimated to be at least two years away. One of the co-discoverers of the antibiotic estimated it would cost “in the low 100 millions” of dollars to develop a teixobactin drug over five or six years. Pharmaceutical companies have been reluctant to make such investments in new antibiotics, because their wide prescription is likely to be discouraged in order to retard development of resistance, which has come to be considered almost inevitable.

Intellectual Property

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and German research agencies (some co-authors are based at the University of Bonn).  Northeastern University holds a patent on the method of producing drugs in situ in soil, and licensed this patent to a privately held company, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, in Cambridge, MA, which owns the patent rights to any compounds produced.  Kim Lewis, the lead author of the article in Nature, is a founder and paid consultant to this company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teixobactin