Search is Powered by Google
Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses News

Groundbreaking Discovery May Lead To Stronger Antibiotics

Main Category: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses
Article Date: 02 Oct 2008 - 0:00 PDT

email icon email to a friend   printer icon printer friendly   write icon view / write opinions   rate icon rate article
Current Article Ratings:

Patient / Public:5 stars

5 (1 votes)

Health Professional:not yet rated

Article Opinions: 0 posts

The last decade has seen a dramatic decline in the effectiveness of antibiotics, resulting in a mounting public health crisis across the world. A new breakthrough by University of Virginia researchers provides physicians and patients a potential new approach toward the creation of less resistant and more effective antibiotics.

"As bacteria become more resistant to our current classes of antibiotics, there also has been a general lack of new targets for developing novel antibiotics," says John H. Bushweller, Ph.D., who led a new study appearing in the September 26, 2008, issue of Molecular Cell. "This is a dangerous situation, but our discovery provides a starting point for a completely novel class of antibiotics, acting via a different mechanism."

What Dr. Bushweller, professor of molecular physiology and biological physics, and fellow researchers at the UVA Health System and Harvard Medical School have determined is the structure of a particular integral membrane enzyme, called DsbB one of the many proteins that reside in cell membranes. These so-called integral membrane proteins are important, because they account for roughly one-third of any genome in the human body and are the targets of more than half of all currently used drugs.

Until now, scientists have been unable to acquire much structural information about these types of proteins; yet determining a protein's structure is vital in order to understand how it functions and how it can potentially operate as a drug target.

The study led by Dr. Bushweller represents the first time scientists have cracked the code required to solve a certain class of membrane protein structure by using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, the preeminent technique for determining the structure of organic compounds. This novel NMR approach now gives the scientific community a brand new platform for attempting to determine structures of other important membrane proteins.

"What this means is that not only did we establish NMR spectroscopy as a potent tool for the characterization of the structure, dynamics and function of integral membrane proteins, but we also discovered that the DsbB enzyme is an exciting potential new target agent for the creation of novel antibiotics," says Dr. Bushweller. "This could give us the roadmap to an entirely new class of antibiotics."

University of Virginia Health System
PO Box 800795
Charlottesville, VA 22908 - 0795
United States
http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu




Personalized Homepage Weekly Newsletters Daily News Alerts
Opioid Induced Constipation ADHD Anxiety Asthma Autism Cancer Diabetes Lung Cancer Lupus Medicare / Medicaid Obesity and BMI Pancreatic Cancer Stem Cells All 'What Is...' Articles All 'How To...' Articles

Ophthalmology Urology
About Us News Licensing Free Website Feeds Free Tools & Content Tell a Friend Accessibility Help / FAQ Article Submission Links Contact Us

add medical news today to your facebook
medical news gadget

Swine Flu Image

Swine Flu Updates

- Latest Swine Flu News
- What is Swine Flu?
- Map Of H1N1 Outbreaks
- Swine Flu - Top 20 FAQ
- Daily Email News Alerts
Stick with Medical News Today for the latest news updates on swine flu.


These are the most read articles from this news category for the last 6 months:
Top Article Star
What Are Antibiotics? How Do Antibiotics Work?
20 Apr 2009
The word antibiotic comes from the Greek anti meaning 'against' and bios meaning 'life' (a bacterium is a life form).' Antibiotics are also known as antibacterials, and they are drugs used to treat infections caused by bacteria...


Talking with Your Doctor image Talking with Your Doctor

Talking with your doctor can sometimes be difficult. Good health care, however, depends on an open dialogue between patients and doctors...

Keeping a Personal Medical Record image Keeping a Personal Medical Record

Medical information is usually scattered in many different places. To receive the best possible health care, people are encouraged to gather information in one place and create a personal medical record...

View more videos...