The university is Shinshu University.
Tuberculosis, an infectious disease that killed 1.5 million people in 2020, is most commonly treated with a cocktail of four drugs. The treatment plan can lead to antibiotic resistance if people don't complete the full course of treatment and if one of the drugs can act on other types ofbacteria.
The researchers named the compound evybactin because it could be used to fight the disease.
Nature chemical biology published their findings.
The Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Shinshu University has an assistant professor who discovered a new antibiotic while studying under a distinguished professor.
Due to the re-isolated substances, it is hard to find new antibiotics from these organisms. Several antibiotics have been discovered from the photorhabdus bacterium, which is a useful source for the discovery of new antibiotics.
According to the researchers, this discovery led to the idea that Photorhabdus could produce antibiotics that are active against M. Tuberculosis. The researchers wanted to see if an antibiotic from Photorhabdus could be used against M. tuberculosis.
The method we used allows us to eliminate antibiotics that may exhibit broad-spectrum or cytotoxic activity in the early stages of screening. Differential screening is an excellent method for finding antibiotics that are specific to a particular species.
The researchers found a novel antibiotic, evybactin, which they found to be only effective against M. Tuberculosis. They found that the binding of evybactin to a specific site of DNA gyrase took place when it was transported inside the targetbacteria by BacA.
This finding is significant not only because of the direct benefit of the discovery that evybactin can be used to treat Tuberculosis, but also because of the implications of the method used to discover evybactin, as the method could potentially be used to discover even more antibiotics
The study showed that it is possible to find new antibiotics by using relatively untouched organisms.
Simple animal experiments have shown that evybactin is active in the body, but further testing is needed to understand the long-term effects.
It is necessary to evaluate the safety, pharmacokinetics and long-term administration of evybactin for the development of an antituberculosis drug.
More information: Yu Imai et al, Evybactin is a DNA gyrase inhibitor that selectively kills Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Nature Chemical Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41589-022-01102-7 Journal information: Nature Chemical Biology Provided by Shinshu University
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