Amid growing concerns that antibiotics currently in use may turn ineffective in fighting bacteria, Israeli scientists have developed a substance that melts the germ's cell surface rapidly, preventing it from producing a new generation of bugs that have adapted to the medicine.
The reason for growing bacterial resistance is that existing antibiotic strains attack only certain "targets" in the germ, leaving active remnants, researchers said.
This enables the next generation of germs to receive information from the injured ones and mutates, rendering the antibiotic ineffective, they said.
The main damage is caused by the wrong use of antibiotics and also if the entire prescribed dose is not consumed, germs remain in the body and quickly learn how to become resistant to the substance, the scientists noted.
In view of this scientists at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, headed by Professor Yehiel Shai, have designed a more powerful antibiotic, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported.
The system that Shai and PhD students, Arik Makovitzky and Dorit Avrahami have developed causes massive destruction of germs and completely melts their cell surface.
The germ is destroyed too fast to enable it to study the medicine's characteristics and thus it cannot transfer information to the next generation.
Shai's team succeeded in combining the properties of a natural antibiotic produced by all organisms as these anti-microbial peptides (AMPs) being positively charged are attracted to the bacteria's negatively charged surface like a magnet, where they can then destroy them, the report said.
"These methods have worked for natural organisms for millions of years, so they should be effective for a very long time," Shai was quoted as saying.
The research according to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences succeeded in combining the properties of AMPs with lipopeptides, resulting in a synthetic lipopeptide that has both a positive charge and the soap-like ability to dissolve oils.
"It's a sort of sophisticated soap, which melts the fatty part of the germ cover, compared to ordinary antibiotics, which penetrate the cell and then paralyse specific systems," Shai noted.
However, he said that the technology he and his team have developed is still in a preliminary stage and could take ten years until it is put into use.
"The graver the problem of germs becoming immune becomes, the more resources I assume they'll invest in it," Shai said.
