This antibiotic is effective against anthrax, and has no detectable resistance, Northeastern research finds
The antibiotic teixobactin — developed a decade ago by Northeastern University professors Kim Lewis and Slava Epstein in collaboration with university startup NovoBiotic — has already proven itself against MRSA and pneumonia.
Now, anthrax can be added to the list, according to new research published in the journal ACS Infectious Diseases.
“This is the first realistic countermeasure against an engineered bioweapon, since there is no resistance to the drug,” says Lewis, university distinguished professor and director of the Antimicrobial Discovery Center at Northeastern.
Teixobactin is unique as an antibiotic that has shown no detectable resistance.
The drug comes from an uncultured soil bacterium.
It attacks bacteria by binding to a fatty molecule necessary for building cell walls and forming a large supramolecular structure on bacteria’s surface. This supramolecular structure damages the membrane and leads to bacteria’s death.
The antibiotic evades resistance because the fatty molecule it binds to is not directly coded by genes and is thus immutable, Lewis explains. Other antibiotics bind to proteins that can easily change through mutations, Lewis adds.
Teixobactin has thus been effective in treating staph MRSA infections and strep pneumonia in animal models.
But there is another threat for which we currently have no solution — engineered antibiotic-resistant bioweapons like anthrax.
“It was the first pathogen that was weaponized and remains the most dangerous bioterror weapon because it produces spores,” Lewis says. “Spores are indestructible, easy to store for a very long time, and can be sprayed as an aerosol.”
And when these spores are inhaled, they germinate and create toxins that destroy tissue. The infection is nearly always fatal.
Moreover, Lewis says it is “not difficult” to take anthrax and make it resistant to existing antibiotics.
So, the team — Lewis, William Lawrence of the University of Texas Medical Branch and Dallas Hughes of Novobiotic — tested teixobactin in rabbits. The animals developed an infection that resembles the infection that humans get when they inhale anthrax.
Teixobactin cleared the resulting infection, with no indication of resistance.
“We can now borrow this sophisticated natural weapon to counter a human-engineered one,” the paper concludes.
“The discovery of teixobactin changed the paradigm in the field of antibiotics,” adds Lewis. “Where it is assumed there would be resistance to everything we could develop, that is no longer the case.”