There's a new antibiotic in town! This antibiotic is said to be capable of killing off antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA in just a span of minutes according to a new study.
In an article in the New Zealand Herald, a team of scientists from the University College London (UCL) was able to discover two powerful antibiotics that could disrupt and kill the likes of superbugs. These antibiotics are the vancomycin and oritavancin.
Dr. Joseph Ndieyira, the team leader of UCL, shared in an interview that in order to kill bacterial cells, antibiotics should bind them first. Naturally, antibiotics can easily latch on the surface of these bacterial cells but for the case of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, there comes the challenge. Ndieyira further explained that their team from UCL was fortunate enough to discover the two antibiotics which can forcefully make their way in even if the bacteria is resistant.
The Sun stated that the antibiotic vancomycin has the ability to disrupt the functional processes of a bacteria as strong as the MRSA. On the other hand, oritavancin is a modified version of vancomycin which is said to be 11,000 times stronger. Ndieyira shared that because of its strength, oritavancin can actually kill bacteria in just a span of 15 minutes while it will take around six to 24 hours for vancomycin to do the same job.
Several scientists have previously stated that due to the worsening climate change, diseases tend to get stronger and become drug-resistant. Dr. Susan Hopkins of the Royal Free Hospital in East London once shared that due to this threat, thankfully there's been progress in studies of finding new potential antibiotics which can target drug-resistant bacteria.
UCL's discovery with vancomycin and oritavancin provides new doors to the research of drugs that could combat resistant bacteria. More and more studies are promising and are soon available.
