This new compound doesn’t fight the bacteria itself — it just makes the antibacterial drugs more potent, and better able to fight the bacteria despite the bugs’ resistance. The compound, developed at North Carolina State University, could help researchers fight an emerging problem with a tricky bacterial enzyme.
The enzyme is called New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase, or NDM-1, and it has been found in bacterial strains around the world since its isolation in 2008. It’s particularly ugly because it makes bacteria able to resist a broad range of antibiotics — including the type that are typically used to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It can resist the most powerful drugs that still work on drug-resistant bacteria, in other words. A superbug indeed. To make matters worse, it confers this ability on gram-negative bacteria, little bugs that are harder to treat — like E. coli and K. pneumoniae. The Staph strain MRSA, the superbug we hear about most often, is a gram-positive bacteria.
