In a rare discovery, a group of scientists claims to have developed one of the most powerful antibiotic drugs from a pile of dirt that is capable of killing the micro-organisms causing serious diseases like tuberculosis, staph, pneumonia, blood infections and many more.
The scientists have named the new antibiotic as teixobactin. They say it operates very differently than its previous counterparts. Scientists believe it is so much powerful and unique in its composition that the infection causing germs may never be able to develop resistance against it.
Detailing about the findings, lead study researcher Kim Lewis, who is a professor at Northeastern University, said, “Our impression is that nature produced a compound that evolved to be free of resistance. This challenges the dogma that we’ve operated under that bacteria will always develop resistance. Well, maybe not in this case.”
A number of other researchers have dismissed this notion and they believe that eventually the germs, bacteria or virus will develop a resistance to this antibiotic. But still many believes the new drug holds great promise in the field of medicine.
Teixobactin is among the two dozen antibiotics that have been newly discovered using the same technique. Scientists call it the latest and the most promising one among all the newly found drugs.
Scientists have yet to test Teixobactin on humans, but the drug has showed remarkable results in curing a variety of bacterial infections in mice.
According to Lewis, it may take at least two years before testing teixobactin on human volunteers.
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