A new copper backed antibiotic shows promise in finding and killing tuberculosis bacteria where they hide.
Copper & Infection Control
A new breakthrough from scientists at the University of Connecticut-UConn-promises to tackle TB bacteria hiding from antibiotics in the immune cells that are supposed to kill them.
Tuberculosis is the number one cause of death from infectious disease worldwide. Around 25% of the world’s population are currently infected, but most are dormant and with 1 in 10 people will “become active, infectious, and often fatal if untreated”.
TB patients usually have to take a cocktail of antibiotics for a long time because the bacteria are only susceptible to drugs when they break out of the ‘macrophage’ in which they were born.
The UConn chemists-working with the Indian Institute of Science, the Max Planck Institute, and MIT-developed an antibiotic peptide that appears to trick the bacteria, allowing copper to kill them.
So far the process has worked in the lab only and the next stage in the research is to use the same chemistry in smaller molecules that can be taken as pills like more typical antibiotics.