MicrobeWorld

Weill Cornell Medical College researchers report that mass spectrometry, a tool currently used to detect and measure proteins and lipids, can also now allow biologists to "see" for the first time exactly how drugs work inside living cells to kill infectious microbes. As a result, scientists may be able to improve existing antibiotics and design new, smarter ones to fight deadly infections, such as tuberculosis. The new study was published in an early online edition of Science.

"The development of antibiotics has been stalled for several decades and many infectious microbes have become drug-resistant," says the study's senior investigator, Dr. Kyu Y. Rhee, an infectious disease expert who is an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College. "We must restock the antibiotic pipeline and our study findings provide a powerful new approach for doing just that."

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