Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have devised a new antibiotic based on vancomycin that is powerfully effective against vancomycin-resistant strains of MRSA and other disease-causing bacteria.
The new vancomycin analog appears to have not one but two distinct mechanisms of anti-microbial action, against which bacteria probably cannot evolve resistance quickly.
“This is the prototype of analogues that once introduced will still be in clinical use a generation or maybe even two generations from now,” said Dale L. Boger, the Richard and Alice Cramer Professor of Chemistry at TSRI.
The report by Boger and members of his laboratory was published recently online ahead of print by the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
