Antibiotic crisis and molecular medicine

Antibacterial/Antibiotic:

In 1928 that Alexander Fleming observed antibiosis against bacteria by a fungus of the genus Penicillium. Fleming postulated the effect was mediated by an antibacterial compound named penicillin, and that its antibacterial properties could be exploited for chemotherapy.

Sir Alexander Fleming, 1952
Photograph courtesy of Associated Press

The discovery of such a powerful antibiotic was unprecedented, and the development of penicillin led to renewed interest in the search for antibiotic compounds with similar efficacy and safety. These drugs were later renamed antibiotics by Selman Waksman, an American microbiologist, in 1942.

 

Antibiotics and World War 2:

Penicillin, the first natural antibiotic discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928

1939 - coinciding with the start of world war 2,

commercially manufactured antibiotics universally and effectively used to treat wounds and ulcers during WW2.

As the first antibiotic discovered was penicillin. Penicillin was first widely used on large numbers of patients in World War II (1939–45). 

The wonder drug:

Penicillin was first tested for military use in the spring of 1943, with pilot studies on soldiers with chronic bacterial infections in Bushnell General Hospital in Utah and Halloran General Hospital in New York. By autumn, doctors were using antibiotic in combat zones, where it was limited to American and Allied military and to patients with life-threatening infections.

The first U.S. wounded to directly benefit from the drug were the flight crews of the Eighth Air Force stationed in Britain. Rationing was necessary, as a single infection could require 2 million or more units of the drug (single ampoules sealed glass vessels holding solutions

for hypodermic injection contained 100,000 units). During the war, the armed forces received 85 percent of the nation's production, which amounted to 231 billion units in 1943. With the implementation of successful mass-production techniques, 1,633 billion units were produced in 1944 and 7,952 billion units in 1945. Penicillin became the war's "wonder drug," and its remarkable medical effects on infectious disease made World War II different from any previous war. (http://www.lib.niu.edu/2001/iht810139.html)

Antibiotic crisis:

Antibiotics, the wonder drug of the 20th century, may become irrelevant in the very near future and as so called Superbugs develops immunity to medication.

 Overuse of antibiotics may lead to superbug epidemic much sooner than is commonly thought.

A crisis looms. In the very near rapidly approaching future, the wonder drugs of the 20th century, antibiotics, may cease to be useful.

Antibiotics become a thing of the past: revolutionary research:

Just this month, researchers have announced a new treatment that will combat antibiotic resistance. This new synthesis, called PPMO *, offers a fundamentally different attack on bacterial infections.

PPMO are synthetic analogs of DNA or RNA that have the ability to silence the expression of specific genes. 

The mechanism that PPMOs use to kill bacteria is revolutionary,” said Bruce Geller, a professor of microbiology in the OSU College of Science and lead author on the study. “They can be synthesized to target almost any gene, and in that way avoid the development of antibiotic resistance and the negative impacts sometimes associated with broad-spectrum antibiotics.

 

“Molecular medicine,”# Geller said, “is the way of the future.” PPMOs specifically target the underlying genes of a bacterium, whereas conventional antibiotics disrupt its cellular function with broader, often unwanted consequences.

#(The molecular medicine perspective emphasizes cellular and molecular phenomena and interventions rather than the previous conceptual and observational focus on patients and their organs.)

*PPMO: peptide-conjugated phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomer

The findings were published this month in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, by researchers from OSU, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and Sarepta, Inc., a Corvallis, Ore., firm.

Reference:1.Geller, Bruce L., Marshall-Batty, Kimberly, Schnell, Frederick J., Mcknight, Mattie M., Iversen, Patrick L. and David E. Greenberg. Gene-Silencing Antisense Oligomers Inhibit Acinetobacter Growth In Vitro and In Vivo. Journal of Infectious Diseases, October 2013

Thankfully consulted and shared above references from: http://nimblepixie.com/?p=8038 http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/09/30/infdis.jit460.abstract   http://www.lib.niu.edu/2001/iht810139.html http://en.wikipedia.org