Peptide Antibiotics

There are many examples of scientists working together to find unique solutions to problems. The current situation of antibiotic resistant bacteria is creating alarm throughout the medical community. The over-prescription of antibiotics and people not taking the full recommended dosage, has created some super bacteria that are quite deadly because they are resistant to antibiotics. A good example is the new form of pneumonia that usually ends with infected people being placed in an Intensive Care Unit.

So what do we do now? One thing we can do is to look at how humans and other organisms ward off infections. The answer may lie with antimicrobial peptide antibiotics which have been found to be produced by all living animals tested to date. This includes frogs, cows, fish, pigs, insects, snakes, birds and plants. And they are produced by many different tissues and organs of the body, including our skin.

These antimicrobial peptides act decisively within minutes. These peptides are thought to punch holes in the membranes of bacteria much like the complement proteins do in our immune system. But what is really exciting about these new antibiotics is that the target bacterium may not be able to mutate and defend itself against these antibiotics. This raises some interesting questions:

• How does the complement immune system work in your body?
• Why can a bacterium not protect itself from a peptide antibiotic?
• How do these peptide antibiotics bind so quickly to the bacterium?
• Why don't the peptide antibiotics destroy the cells of the organism that produces them?
• What does the Human Genome Project have to do with these drugs?
• When will these peptide antibiotics be available?