A universal antibiotic?
A revolutionary natural antibiotic has been discovered in Russia
Scientists of Tyumen State University (TSU) together with Russian colleagues have found a universal natural antibiotic that overcomes the resistance of pathogens to drugs. The text of the study was published in the journal Applied Biochemistry and Microbiology (Sadykova et al., Antimicrobic Activity of the Lipopeptide Emericellipsin A Isolated from Emericellopsis alkalina against Biofilm-Forming Bacteria).
The authors claim that the found substance will help to effectively fight most infectious diseases of humans and animals caused by bacteria and fungi. According to the university scientists, one of the tasks of pharmacology is to find natural antibiotics that can fight microorganisms with multiple (multi-drug resistant, MDR) or absolute (extreme-drug resistant, XDR) resistance to antibiotics available on the market.
Researchers from TSU were the first in the world to demonstrate the unique ability of the emericillipsin A peptide isolated from the alkalophilic mycellial fungus Emericellopsis alkalina. According to experts, the substance suppresses the ability of bacteria to form biofilms, so that the resistance of these pathogens to antibiotics disappears.
As the authors of the work explained, the main therapeutic feature of the studied substance is the universality of the effect. Not only MDR- and XDR-forms of bacteria are defenseless against emericillipsin A, but also almost any pathogenic eukaryotes – for example, mycellial fungi and yeast.
"Emericillipsin A acts on eukaryotes and prokaryotes due to different molecular mechanisms. Eukaryotes – fungi and tumor cells – die due to the destruction of their cell membrane by a peptide, and the virulence of prokaryotes is suppressed by preventing the formation of biofilms," said Evgeny Rogozhin, senior researcher at the Laboratory of antimicrobial Resistance X–BIO of TSU.
As the scientists noted, among the pathologies that emericillipsin A will help fight are tumors, as well as all kinds of bacterial and fungal infections.
Emericillipsin A, according to experts of TSU, is promising both as an independent therapeutic agent and as an element of complex preparations. Therapy can be carried out either through injections, or topically – by direct treatment of the affected tissues.
The study was conducted in close cooperation with colleagues from the G.F. Gause Research Institute for the Study of New Antibiotics, the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of Rospotrebnadzor and the M.M. Shemyakin and Yu.A. Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In the future, the team of scientists intends to move from working with cell models to laboratory tests of the drug.
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