According to a study, a new form of precision drug therapy has been discovered that offers potential treatment for those affected by MRSA by wiping out bugs and curing infections that can't be fought with standard antibiotics, reported the Guardian. The treatment works by attaching antibiotics onto antibodies that subsequently narrow in on pathogens and deliver a dose of the drug directly into the infected tissues.
The therapy poses plenty of benefits for those that suffer from recurring bacterial infections such as MRSA, which is currently very hard to treat even with the use of strong antibiotics. It could also be used on those suffering from tuberculosis and chronic infections that occur in heart surgery patients.
Despite the promising results, the therapy has yet to be tested on humans and there is no guarantee that this technique will be as effective when it is, according to Ars Technica.
"We'd love to now test this in humans," said Sanjeev Mariathasan, lead author of the study. "Compared with conventional antibiotic therapy, the prodrug approach is likely to reduce both the emergence of antibiotic resistance (by reducing the exposure of other bacteria to the active drug), and the disruption of the body's normal communities of microorganisms."
If the treatment is successful in human subjects, it could also help drug companies and researchers discover novel uses for older drugs, according to Nature. For example, older drugs that were toxic at the doses they were used in initially could now reach target pathogen cells at lower doses using this new technique.
"To me, the most exciting perspective is the ability to tap this large resource of antimicrobial drugs that have not survived the pipeline," said Wolf-Dietrich Hardt, a microbiologist from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
