8 ms·

New antibiotic that kills drug-resistant bacteria found in technician's garden

421 points by ascorbic 1y ago

nugzbunny 1y ago
Wasn’t this how penicillin was found? On some cantaloupe sent in by an average joe?
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 1y ago
  Not quite. Alexander Fleming was growing cultures of staph bacteria, went away for some time, and when he came back, found one petri dish had been contaminated with fungus, and that the fungus inhibited the growth of the bacteria. It seems to be unclear where the contamination came from, but the fungus itself was already known to science at the time.
- ggm 1y ago
  The cantaloupe is how the US production process in vats got a massive efficiency kick because the mould on the cantaloupe released significantly more penicillin than the prior one. But, this was after the initial discovery. It's in "Florey: The Man Who Made Penicillin" by Lennard Bickel
Centigonal 1y ago
There's some interesting history around scientists collecting soil samples from across the world to look for novel antibiotics. I learned about it through this video, but there's a lot to explore beyond this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ig6ktJGTWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ig6ktJGTWk
noduerme 1y ago
Naive question here: Why can't new antibiotics be developed by just spraying fields of mushrooms or petri dishes full of fungi with antibiotic resistant bacteria and seeing which ones come up with novel ways to fight them?
- CarRamrod 1y ago
  Birds, mostly
- coryrc 1y ago
  Because you'll end up finding bacteriophages and wonder why we're wasting so many lives and much money on antibiotics. Antibiotics are lazy. Sure, some people have to die, but at least you didn't have to spend any time taking samples of the actual infection.
  - yyyk 1y ago
    Bacteriophages suck. What some people never tell you is that the body treats phages as invaders and can very effectively get rid of them, they are not adapted to the human environment. These are only good for local treatments, sometimes...
    - pazimzadeh 1y ago
      that seems like a good thing. they only infect bacteria, not humans phages are found in large quantities in mucus, where they seemingly contribute to the barrier function of mucus by preying on any bacteria that try go cross https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23690590/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23690590/ https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1508355112 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1508355112 https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01984-19 https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01984-19 this might be adaptable for therapeutics https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48560-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48560-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-07269-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-07269-0
    - drob518 1y ago
      Well, you actually want the body to clear things. That’s not a problem, it’s a feature. If the phage is able to target the bacteria before it is fully cleared, that’s all you need. Humans have been injected with phages and it has been shown to work. The Soviets actually did a lot of research on it, IIRC. The practical issue that is really challenging for broad phage therapy adoption is that phages are very specific to the bacteria they target. So, you can’t just get injected with any old phage and expect it to work. Instead, you need to catalog all the phages you find in a database and search for one that can target the specific bacteria the patient has been infected with. Phages are simply viruses that target bacteria. You’re awash in them all the time.
logifail 1y ago
In the 1960s a Canadian research expedition collected soil samples from Easter Island which led to the discovery of rapamycin (aka sirolimus). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirolimus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirolimus https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9634974/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9634974/ (Full disclosure - spent my PhD working with macrolides including this one. It's an amazing origin story for a compound...)
- hentrep 1y ago
  The discovery of rapamycin is such a fascinating story. Radiolab covered this a few years back - I encourage everyone to give it a listen: https://radiolab.org/podcast/dirty-drug-and-ice-cream-tub https://radiolab.org/podcast/dirty-drug-and-ice-cream-tub
  - adammarples 1y ago
    I would like to be able to listen to this but its almost like it's for 4 year olds. The scientists looked in the soil samples "Waaaaa why would you look in soil?? EWW!" Anyway the compound stopped the fungus growing "So it's sort of like it stopped time??" Yes and it had a suppresive effect on the immune system "So it's sort of like Elsa from Frozen it just freezes things??" Yes, these are direct quotes from the episode, all within the first few minutes.
KSteffensen 1y ago
The main problem with development of new antibiotics is not that it requires groundbreaking new science to be invented, but that there is no business case for it. Or at least the business case for spending your R&D on anti-obesity medicine looks a lot better.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  Yeah, someone else mentioned that as well; if the researched, mass produced and readily available antibiotic is still mostly effective and sells well, spending millions on finding and getting approval for one that would only be used in 1% of cases is not profitable. Gotta love capitalism.
- mmooss 1y ago
  > The main problem with development of new antibiotics is ... that there is no business case for it. It sounds like the main problem is a for-profit healthcare system.
  - ninalanyon 1y ago
    Not entirely though. Another problem is that governments only support the big players in drug research. They take the easy simple path.
- johnea 1y ago
  So, for those of us down here at the bottom of the karma ladder, after 5000 lines of comments about giving antibiotics to cows, which had nothing to do with the article, there is some actual discussion of the topic. This inability to bring a product to market is in fact an artifact of the for-profit healthcare system. Besides the obvious aspects of weight-loss and erectile-dysfunction drugs being more profitable, there is also an issue with imaginary property. Pharma will not bring a drug to market unless they can own exclusive rights. Since this is a naturally occurring molecule, some tweak will need to be made before the chemical is eligible for a patent. So until some company can make a custom modification, without disrupting the efficacy, it won't be considered a viable product.
mentalgear 1y ago
Most importantly, the use of novel antibiotics must be strictly prohibited in the animal food industry. This is crucial because the misuse of antibiotics in livestock farming has been a major driver of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a global health crisis. When antibiotics are overused or improperly applied in animals, bacteria can evolve to become resistant, rendering these life-saving drugs ineffective for treating infections in humans and animals alike. It has always been a perversity that life-saving reserve antibiotics were ever permitted to prop up the grotesque machinery of the modern food industry—a system built on global-scale animal cruelty.
- bestouff 1y ago
  Yeah, like if the current US situation would tend towards food industry safety ...
  - shafyy 1y ago
    The people have the power. Why not millions of people are on the fucking streets every day across the US is beyond me.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - danparsonson 1y ago
      Perhaps because they feel like they have the power and it's more often the disenfranchised who end up on the streets?
    - kristiandupont 1y ago
      >The people have the power. What do you picture will happen because of protests, exactly? That the administration realizes the error of its ways? Because it seems more likely to me that they would use it as an excuse to implement more autocratic measures.
      - 1y ago
M95D 1y ago
> New antibiotic that kills drug-resistant bacteria But will it kill humans too? There's lots of antibiotics out there. Most of them will kill everything, including us, and we don't want them.
- djmips 1y ago
  First paragraph. "Researchers have discovered a new antibiotic molecule that targets a broad range of disease-causing bacteria — even strains resistant to commercial drugs — and is not toxic to human cells. [1]" "[1] Jangra, M. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08723-7 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08723-7 (2025)."
- dubcanada 1y ago
  People need to learn to actually read articles before writing comments. As the other commenter posted it’s literally answered in the first paragraph.
djmips 1y ago
It's interesting that this antibacterial molecule is created by a bacteria. So there's one bacteria that's resistant I guess. But maybe that's not a concerning type of bacteria but I hear that bacteria can transfer traits from one species to another...
- gilleain 1y ago
  Oh it's completely expected that bacteria create antibiotics - it's part of the low-level chemical warfare that bacteria carry out against each other. Plants as well are chemical factories ('secondary metabolism') that produce all sorts of crazy compounds to kill each other off, as well as insects.
MeteorMarc 1y ago
Love the British humour! Read the bold heading of the first subsection.
kelnos 1y ago
https://archive.is/5OyBO https://archive.is/5OyBO
anthk 1y ago
>Enable Javascript and cookies to continue. That's why I prefer Science Alert and their RSS'.
- johnea 1y ago
  Weird, I browse with javascript and cookies disabled, and was able to read the article at nature.com.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
pfdietz 1y ago
> The ribosome is an attractive antibiotic target because bacteria don’t easily develop resistance to drugs targeting the structure, adds Lewis. Sure they do, by the general mechanism of preventing the drug from entering the bacterium and/or pumping it back out. Bacteria have general mechanisms for removing molecules they don't need. This molecule is a peptide, so one mechanism for developing resistance would be evolution of a specific protease. Bacteria already have enzymes for breaking peptide bonds.
yawnxyz 1y ago
The road from finding a new molecule with antibiotic properties to passing Phase 3 is... long, arduous and not worth it. And if you do spend the $1bn to get there, you end up like Achaogen. For anyone in this field, read this teardown of Achaogen: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-03452-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-03452-0
jakedata 1y ago
So it only kills drug resistant bacteria that came from the technician's garden? That seems unusually specific.
jumperabg 1y ago
Amazing this is another new type of antibiotic that was discovered maybe for the last 6 months?
kylehotchkiss 1y ago
"New antibiotic that kills drug-resistant bacteria" until we freely give the recipe to developing country pharmaceutical companies with no requirement to control distribution so now this antibiotic is given for a simple cough and we're back where we started. Antibiotic resistance is as much a political problem as a biology one.
- mmooss 1y ago
  Developing countries should be deprived of antibiotics, or affordable antibiotics? cui bono? That's too convenient for big pharma companies.
  - kylehotchkiss 1y ago
    Developing countries should absolutely get the standard set of antibiotics. Formulas for "antibiotics of last resort" (I would consider a newly designed one in this category) should not be sent to Pharma companies of these countries, rather, the antibiotics should be pre-dosed and mailed over from a country who can maintain the integrity of the formula in a limited fashion to keep their effectiveness high so they can continue to serve patients years into the future. It sucks, but we've watched antibiotics be abused so badly that babies are born into hospitals where they catch resistant infections nearly right after childbirth. I blame the antibiotics-for-every-cough medical practices common in some countries (I've seen this happen myself!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofbtepraOX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofbtepraOX4
    - flashman 1y ago
      Jesus
pwdisswordfishz 1y ago
Not too impressive if it kills bacteria from just one garden.

421 points by ascorbic 1y ago

nugzbunny 1y ago

Wasn’t this how penicillin was found? On some cantaloupe sent in by an average joe?

mtlmtlmtlmtl 1y ago
Not quite. Alexander Fleming was growing cultures of staph bacteria, went away for some time, and when he came back, found one petri dish had been contaminated with fungus, and that the fungus inhibited the growth of the bacteria. It seems to be unclear where the contamination came from, but the fungus itself was already known to science at the time.
ggm 1y ago
The cantaloupe is how the US production process in vats got a massive efficiency kick because the mould on the cantaloupe released significantly more penicillin than the prior one. But, this was after the initial discovery. It's in "Florey: The Man Who Made Penicillin" by Lennard Bickel

Centigonal 1y ago

There's some interesting history around scientists collecting soil samples from across the world to look for novel antibiotics. I learned about it through this video, but there's a lot to explore beyond this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ig6ktJGTWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ig6ktJGTWk

noduerme 1y ago

Naive question here: Why can't new antibiotics be developed by just spraying fields of mushrooms or petri dishes full of fungi with antibiotic resistant bacteria and seeing which ones come up with novel ways to fight them?

CarRamrod 1y ago
Birds, mostly
coryrc 1y ago
Because you'll end up finding bacteriophages and wonder why we're wasting so many lives and much money on antibiotics. Antibiotics are lazy. Sure, some people have to die, but at least you didn't have to spend any time taking samples of the actual infection.
- yyyk 1y ago
  Bacteriophages suck. What some people never tell you is that the body treats phages as invaders and can very effectively get rid of them, they are not adapted to the human environment. These are only good for local treatments, sometimes...
  - pazimzadeh 1y ago
    that seems like a good thing. they only infect bacteria, not humans phages are found in large quantities in mucus, where they seemingly contribute to the barrier function of mucus by preying on any bacteria that try go cross https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23690590/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23690590/ https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1508355112 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1508355112 https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01984-19 https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01984-19 this might be adaptable for therapeutics https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48560-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48560-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-07269-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-07269-0
  - drob518 1y ago
    Well, you actually want the body to clear things. That’s not a problem, it’s a feature. If the phage is able to target the bacteria before it is fully cleared, that’s all you need. Humans have been injected with phages and it has been shown to work. The Soviets actually did a lot of research on it, IIRC. The practical issue that is really challenging for broad phage therapy adoption is that phages are very specific to the bacteria they target. So, you can’t just get injected with any old phage and expect it to work. Instead, you need to catalog all the phages you find in a database and search for one that can target the specific bacteria the patient has been infected with. Phages are simply viruses that target bacteria. You’re awash in them all the time.

logifail 1y ago

In the 1960s a Canadian research expedition collected soil samples from Easter Island which led to the discovery of rapamycin (aka sirolimus). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirolimus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirolimus https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9634974/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9634974/ (Full disclosure - spent my PhD working with macrolides including this one. It's an amazing origin story for a compound...)

hentrep 1y ago
The discovery of rapamycin is such a fascinating story. Radiolab covered this a few years back - I encourage everyone to give it a listen: https://radiolab.org/podcast/dirty-drug-and-ice-cream-tub https://radiolab.org/podcast/dirty-drug-and-ice-cream-tub
- adammarples 1y ago
  I would like to be able to listen to this but its almost like it's for 4 year olds. The scientists looked in the soil samples "Waaaaa why would you look in soil?? EWW!" Anyway the compound stopped the fungus growing "So it's sort of like it stopped time??" Yes and it had a suppresive effect on the immune system "So it's sort of like Elsa from Frozen it just freezes things??" Yes, these are direct quotes from the episode, all within the first few minutes.

KSteffensen 1y ago

The main problem with development of new antibiotics is not that it requires groundbreaking new science to be invented, but that there is no business case for it. Or at least the business case for spending your R&D on anti-obesity medicine looks a lot better.

Cthulhu_ 1y ago
Yeah, someone else mentioned that as well; if the researched, mass produced and readily available antibiotic is still mostly effective and sells well, spending millions on finding and getting approval for one that would only be used in 1% of cases is not profitable. Gotta love capitalism.
mmooss 1y ago
> The main problem with development of new antibiotics is ... that there is no business case for it. It sounds like the main problem is a for-profit healthcare system.
- ninalanyon 1y ago
  Not entirely though. Another problem is that governments only support the big players in drug research. They take the easy simple path.
johnea 1y ago
So, for those of us down here at the bottom of the karma ladder, after 5000 lines of comments about giving antibiotics to cows, which had nothing to do with the article, there is some actual discussion of the topic. This inability to bring a product to market is in fact an artifact of the for-profit healthcare system. Besides the obvious aspects of weight-loss and erectile-dysfunction drugs being more profitable, there is also an issue with imaginary property. Pharma will not bring a drug to market unless they can own exclusive rights. Since this is a naturally occurring molecule, some tweak will need to be made before the chemical is eligible for a patent. So until some company can make a custom modification, without disrupting the efficacy, it won't be considered a viable product.

mentalgear 1y ago

Most importantly, the use of novel antibiotics must be strictly prohibited in the animal food industry. This is crucial because the misuse of antibiotics in livestock farming has been a major driver of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a global health crisis. When antibiotics are overused or improperly applied in animals, bacteria can evolve to become resistant, rendering these life-saving drugs ineffective for treating infections in humans and animals alike. It has always been a perversity that life-saving reserve antibiotics were ever permitted to prop up the grotesque machinery of the modern food industry—a system built on global-scale animal cruelty.

bestouff 1y ago
Yeah, like if the current US situation would tend towards food industry safety ...
- shafyy 1y ago
  The people have the power. Why not millions of people are on the fucking streets every day across the US is beyond me.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - danparsonson 1y ago
    Perhaps because they feel like they have the power and it's more often the disenfranchised who end up on the streets?
  - kristiandupont 1y ago
    >The people have the power. What do you picture will happen because of protests, exactly? That the administration realizes the error of its ways? Because it seems more likely to me that they would use it as an excuse to implement more autocratic measures.
    - 1y ago

M95D 1y ago

> New antibiotic that kills drug-resistant bacteria But will it kill humans too? There's lots of antibiotics out there. Most of them will kill everything, including us, and we don't want them.

djmips 1y ago
First paragraph. "Researchers have discovered a new antibiotic molecule that targets a broad range of disease-causing bacteria — even strains resistant to commercial drugs — and is not toxic to human cells. [1]" "[1] Jangra, M. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08723-7 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08723-7 (2025)."
dubcanada 1y ago
People need to learn to actually read articles before writing comments. As the other commenter posted it’s literally answered in the first paragraph.

djmips 1y ago

It's interesting that this antibacterial molecule is created by a bacteria. So there's one bacteria that's resistant I guess. But maybe that's not a concerning type of bacteria but I hear that bacteria can transfer traits from one species to another...

gilleain 1y ago
Oh it's completely expected that bacteria create antibiotics - it's part of the low-level chemical warfare that bacteria carry out against each other. Plants as well are chemical factories ('secondary metabolism') that produce all sorts of crazy compounds to kill each other off, as well as insects.

MeteorMarc 1y ago

Love the British humour! Read the bold heading of the first subsection.

kelnos 1y ago

https://archive.is/5OyBO https://archive.is/5OyBO

anthk 1y ago

>Enable Javascript and cookies to continue. That's why I prefer Science Alert and their RSS'.

johnea 1y ago
Weird, I browse with javascript and cookies disabled, and was able to read the article at nature.com.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

pfdietz 1y ago

> The ribosome is an attractive antibiotic target because bacteria don’t easily develop resistance to drugs targeting the structure, adds Lewis. Sure they do, by the general mechanism of preventing the drug from entering the bacterium and/or pumping it back out. Bacteria have general mechanisms for removing molecules they don't need. This molecule is a peptide, so one mechanism for developing resistance would be evolution of a specific protease. Bacteria already have enzymes for breaking peptide bonds.

yawnxyz 1y ago

The road from finding a new molecule with antibiotic properties to passing Phase 3 is... long, arduous and not worth it. And if you do spend the $1bn to get there, you end up like Achaogen. For anyone in this field, read this teardown of Achaogen: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-03452-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-03452-0

jakedata 1y ago

So it only kills drug resistant bacteria that came from the technician's garden? That seems unusually specific.

jumperabg 1y ago

Amazing this is another new type of antibiotic that was discovered maybe for the last 6 months?

kylehotchkiss 1y ago

"New antibiotic that kills drug-resistant bacteria" until we freely give the recipe to developing country pharmaceutical companies with no requirement to control distribution so now this antibiotic is given for a simple cough and we're back where we started. Antibiotic resistance is as much a political problem as a biology one.

mmooss 1y ago
Developing countries should be deprived of antibiotics, or affordable antibiotics? cui bono? That's too convenient for big pharma companies.
- kylehotchkiss 1y ago
  Developing countries should absolutely get the standard set of antibiotics. Formulas for "antibiotics of last resort" (I would consider a newly designed one in this category) should not be sent to Pharma companies of these countries, rather, the antibiotics should be pre-dosed and mailed over from a country who can maintain the integrity of the formula in a limited fashion to keep their effectiveness high so they can continue to serve patients years into the future. It sucks, but we've watched antibiotics be abused so badly that babies are born into hospitals where they catch resistant infections nearly right after childbirth. I blame the antibiotics-for-every-cough medical practices common in some countries (I've seen this happen myself!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofbtepraOX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofbtepraOX4
  - flashman 1y ago
    Jesus

pwdisswordfishz 1y ago

Not too impressive if it kills bacteria from just one garden.