A team of scientists led by Prof Guillermo Bazan from NUS Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials has developed a novel antibiotic named COE-PNH2 that is capable of combating hard-to-treat mycobacterial lung infections. Such infections, which are notorious for resisting conventional treatment, pose a serious health threat, especially to the elderly and those with underlying conditions.
The researchers' interdisciplinary study, partly funded by NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine's Kickstart Initiative, was published in scientific journalon 21 February 2024. Kickstart Initiative is a translational medicine programme aimed at bringing NUS Medicine's promising biomedical research projects to market.
Here is where COEs shake things up. A class of antimicrobial compounds with a modular molecular framework, COEs can be engineered into a panoply of therapeutic agents to fight a broad spectrum of infections."COEs represent a fundamentally different approach to antibiotic design," noted Prof Bazan, a corresponding author of the study.
Safety is also a cornerstone of the new antibiotic. It demonstrated low toxicity in mammalian cells and did not induce the destruction of red blood cells at concentrations far exceeding those required for antibacterial activity. This noncytotoxic nature underscores COE-PNH2's potential as a therapeutic agent with a wide margin of safety.
Intriguingly, the researchers have also discovered the presence of intracellular vesicles in Mab treated with COE-PNH2. Are these vesicles by-products of disrupted bioenergetics, or do they form as a result of physical interactions between the compound and the membrane lipids? The answers may provide vital insights into how COE-PNH2 exerts its antimicrobial action and inform the development of interventions for other hard-to-treat pathogens.
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