Scary Facts About Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs

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Scary Facts About Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs

By Trista - January 29, 2022

2. How Many New Antibiotics Are Over the Horizon?

There are insufficient drugs to deal with the growing threat of superbugs. That leaves the human population up the creek without a paddle. According to the World Health Organization, there are at least between forty and fifty antibiotics in clinical development at the moment. The majority of these will only bring limited results compared to already-existing treatments. Furthermore, only a few targets a small number of any of the superbugs.

The main problem is that it will take up to at least ten years for any of these drugs to make it to the market with the amount of testing they have to do (via Well Come). Moreover, many of them will fail along the way, too. Why? Because only one out of every fifteen drugs will actually reach patients for use. It has become a less fruitful endeavor, unfortunately. As a result, many pharmaceutical companies abandon research on antibiotics altogether. Nevertheless, there’s another hill to climb with getting these medications to market and making them accessible to both doctors and patients alike.

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1. What Else Can Scientists Do to Combat These Resistant Superbugs?

Researchers have recently put their heads together to find better ways to combat these superbugs. How? By using their own relatives against them. They’ve employed the use of CRISPR-Cas9 (via DW). What is that? A constructed gene-editing tool that infiltrates the interior of the harmful bacteria. It works as a pair of “genetic scissors,” cutting the DNA strands in the bacteria. That way, they can no longer thrive. The great thing about this method is that it doesn’t kill the good bacteria in the body the way broad-spectrum antibiotics do; it focuses only on harmful bacteria.

CRISPR-Cas9 have specific DNA sequence targets to know precisely what to look for and cut where that sequence is. This process is even more successful because bacteria share genetic material just by touching. With these changed sequences, the bacteria do all of the work for CRISPR-Cas9 (via DW). That means copying the new series and ultimately spelling their own demise. This has proven to be 99.9% effective against the targeted antibiotic-resistant bacteria in mice. In fact, it works by killing them in just under four days. However, the real problem lies in determining whether bacteria will further evolve to combat this technology. Thus, making them even harder to kill in the future.

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