10 ms·

Nasal Bacteria Pump Out a Potential New Antibiotic That Kills MRSA

195 points by kungfudoi 10y ago

monocle 10y ago
First there was stool transplants. Now, we can have snot transplants.
- toodlebunions 10y ago
  Whatever works, right?
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Just so long as the two procedures stay completely separate.
- jeffwass 10y ago
  You can pick your friends. You can pick your nose. But you cannot pick your friend's nose... Until now!
Benjamin_Dobell 10y ago
Awesome research. But... > The researchers then checked snot from hospitalized patients. Of 187 samples, all but one were colonized by either S. aureus or S. lugdunensis > S. lugdunensis, was killing S. aureus. Its weapon of choice? A small compound dubbed lugdunin > The German researchers who performed the study have filed a patent for lugdunin Are we really allowing people to patent naturally occurring biological compounds these days? Shouldn't the patent be for specific treatments derived from their findings on lugdunin, not the compound itself?
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  You have to choose a system. If we don't want naturally-occurring compounds patented, but we want them researched for potential drug use, we need more public funding. Otherwise, we have to offer researchers and drug manufacturers an incentive to take risks with exploring these compounds. Barring lugdunin from being patented while providing no public funding would incentivise this group to withhold publication until they thought they'd found every commercially-reasonably derivation.
  - Benjamin_Dobell 10y ago
    At least if they'd kept their findings secret, researchers could independently be researching the same thing. Now independent researchers won't want to touch lugdunin because they'll need to license the patent, however they won't know whether licensing the patent is worthwhile until they do their research. This will prevent further research, not encourage it.
    - doesnotexist 10y ago
      Are you sure about that? I would think that the patent wouldn't apply to non-commercial investigations or research. That is you would be free to synthesize or extract this chemical in a laboratory environment. However, if you wished to manufacture the drug for commercial purposes then you would need to license the patent.
      - pyre 10y ago
        Well, potential researchers will also have to weigh the possibility that they spend all of the time and effort to research other possibilities for it only to find out that after all of the licensing fees, etc they won't even be able to break even on the fruits of their research. It carries too high of a risk for financially-minded people (looking for a return on investment) to throw money at it.
        hueving 10y ago
        >It carries too high of a risk for financially-minded people (looking for a return on investment) to throw money at it. As opposed to the risk of searching for some completely new thing that may not exist?
      - Benjamin_Dobell 10y ago
        You're right that it won't apply for non-commercial investigations. But how are you funding the investigation? It's typically funded by the proceeds generated from the research. Research is always hit and miss as to profitability, more miss than hit. Factor in potentially unknown licensing arrangements, even if you do have a "hit", and suddenly your research doesn't look like such a good idea.
- rcar 10y ago
  Most antibiotics are naturally occurring biological compounds (besides things like sulfonamides). Given how little upside there tends to be for developing new antibiotics vs. the public good that new ones can bring for treating resistant bugs, this is one of the very few areas where I'm firmly in favor of allowing patent protection.
- chris_va 10y ago
  Composition of matter patents got a lot harder for naturally isolated compounds circa 2014. We'll see if it gets granted. Having said that, a patent for general anti-biotic+matter is probably valid and it's unlikely that this compound will be used for much else.
- SocratesV 10y ago
  Could they be patenting it to prevent others from doing so? They'll probably make some money out of it, to fund more research, but hopefully any deal with pharmaceutical companies should have some pricing clause to make this widely affordable to public health services.
- amelius 10y ago
  You know something is wrong with the IP system when companies start patenting snot.
- JshWright 10y ago
  > Shouldn't the patent be for specific treatments derived from their findings on lugdunin, not the compound itself? I would expect the patent to be on the process for isolating or synthesizing the compound.
- rayiner 10y ago
  Under the Supreme Court's decision in Myriad (which held you can't patent naturally-occurring gene sequences by themselves), you probably can't patent a naturally-occurring biological compound.
  - pc2g4d 10y ago
    ... in the United States. They filed for a patent under the European patent regime, right?
    - rayiner 10y ago
      I should have RTFA'ed.
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  Well if it is patented and the terms are very lenient, because it's owned by the government, then that's the best of both worlds since it prevents some other company from patenting it and charging heaps and then it gets put into the public domain in 20 years (or whatever the term is).
im4w1l 10y ago
Wont using this be long term harmful to our nasal health, as bacteria acquire immunity?
- adrianN 10y ago
  Dieing of MRSA is also harmful.
- heavypurity 10y ago
  This is the first thing I think of when I read this too. I am worried this will train bacteria to be resistant to natural immune defense mechanism of human... : (
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rjbwork 10y ago
    Yeah...really, how COULDN'T that happen?
- dpark 10y ago
  It could happen, but we already have 30% of people with MRSA colonized in their noses. If we develop a new antibiotic that saves thousands or millions of lives, but the MRSA colonization number climbs to, say, 60%, will that be a net gain? I think so, since in general having MRSA colonized is not problematic, and that number is climbing anyway.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> The researchers then checked snot from hospitalized patients. Of 187 samples, all but one were colonized by either S. aureus or S. lugdunensis, but not both. The researchers think where one species grows, the other can’t. How does S. aureus prevent S. lugdunesis from invading?
- ajuc 10y ago
  Maybe lugdunesis is killed by some antibiotics that aureus is resistant to?
encoderer 10y ago
Life finds a way?
iofj 10y ago
This does nothing to solve the real problem. The issue isn't (or wasn't) that we couldn't cure MRSA at all, it was a gradual evolution. In the 1960's we had 5 working drugs that would kill essentially any bacteria. And then we had 4. We discovered new ones, at one point I believe up to 7. But resistance made it go down pretty much by one per decade, but each next one ended faster. And then it hit zero, in 2012 I believe. Now we may (maybe) be back up to one. Big whoop. Not going to last. The problem is that evolution is out-researching us, the problem is that we're losing the war, not any particular battle. Antibiotics used to last 3-5 decades. Now we're down to years. While we do find new antibiotics on a regular basis, the problem is the speed of adaptation. The problem is that science is losing/has lost the "battle with darkness" as it was called 700 years ago. We are now in the situation that there are people dying because they entered hospitals for unrelated reasons (where they were exposed to these bacteria). The problem is that we need to let millions of people die of curable diseases constantly or risk a Spanish flu like incident that can be reasonably expected to kill somewhere between 500 million and a billion humans today.
- ss248 10y ago
  "The problem is that we need to let millions of people die of curable diseases constantly" Not the case at all. Biggest use of antibiotics today is in food production(agriculture etc.), not in hospitals. And it's also completely unregulated. "The problem is that evolution is out-researching us" Evolution also has a simple rule: "Use it or lose it". So don't be afraid. There are ways around acquired immunity.
  - refurb 10y ago
    And it's also completely unregulated. I think the FDA might disagree with you on that point.
  - djrogers 10y ago
    >Biggest use of antibiotics today is in food production(agriculture etc.), not in hospitals. And it's also completely unregulated. Completely false - antibiotic (and all drug) use in animals is absolutely regulated in nearly all countries, including the US [1,2,3]. Said regulations may not be what you'd like, but to claim they don't exist is silly. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock#Regulatory_context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock#Re... [2]http://modernfarmer.com/2015/10/california-antibiotic-livestock-regulations/ http://modernfarmer.com/2015/10/california-antibiotic-livest... [3]https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/06/03/2015-13393/veterinary-feed-directive https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/06/03/2015-133... edit formatting
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
lifeisstillgood 10y ago
Now we need a globally agreed system of anti-biotic triage - you can have anti-biotics, but only administered in hospital, signed off by two doctors and with these life threatening conditions. Treat them with care this time round
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > signed off by two doctors And then we get to complain about the excess bureaucracy in healthcare!
- ajuc 10y ago
  That would overwhelm our hospital system. It's possible to find middle ground, and I think comprehensive IT systems for all doctors with real-time forbidden drugs lists and epidemia tracking would make this much easier. It's even possible to divide hospitals into "different drug is forbidden here", and when someone has MRSA - put him in a hospital where the drugs that doesn't work on him - are banned anyway. And use "last ditch" drugs only in these hospitals. And of course the main thing is to stop abusing antibiotics for agriculture.
  - lifeisstillgood 10y ago
    I am advocating a more restrictive and considered prescription regieme - specifically only allowing hospitals to prescribe is an example not a policy decision That's said I am under convinced it would overwhelm hospitals. Hospitals seem overwhelmed to me because A&E is a faster and more efficient way "into" the system than community based care or other approaches. The common case is elderly care - almost no funding for in home nursing help, hard to get through the process, and elderly struggle on until a manageable chronic complaint turns acute, leading to ambulance, A&E admittance and a struggle for scare beds in wards. Whereas the hospital probably could have been avoided through treatment at home / locally. Until we pay for community systems we won't relive the pressure on hospitals. And this out centre of excellence will just be fire fighting. (Excuse the sudden rant - not sure where that came from :-)
- asuffield 10y ago
0n34n7 10y ago
Which is why I always eat my boogers, and seldom, if ever, get sick.
dest 10y ago
An interesting point would be that if S. aureus becomes resistant to lugdunin (a matter of a few years maybe), S. lugdunensis might evolve naturally to find a new antibiotic. So a similar study in a few years might lead to a new antibiotic molecule targetting the mutated S. aureus. Is there hope for this or is it nonsense?
- taneq 10y ago
  I was just thinking something similar - maybe the future for bacterium-specific treatments isn't to try and find a new antibiotic, but rather to pit different nasty bacteria against each other in an endless in-vitro cage match, then analyze the winner to learn their tricks?
  - Practicality 10y ago
    The difficulty is creating a suitable environment. There are a lot specifics about a nose that are difficult to duplicate. Other than that, the idea is perfectly viable.
mvanvoorden 10y ago
Partly relevant: a few months ago they discovered bacteria in beards that also kill MRSA: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/beards-good-for-health-more-hygienic-bacteria-resistant-than-shaven-skin-study-finds-a6823461.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/beards-good-for-he...
- arviewer 10y ago
  Interesting read. What I don't understand is why other body hair is not mentioned, and if that has the same effect. If not, what makes a beard different?
  - mvanvoorden 10y ago
    I assume because it's around the mouth. Food passes, some of that will stay in the beard, allowing for different cultures to grow than elsewhere.
    - sdkjfwiluf 10y ago
      or, the change in acidity from acid on the outside to alkaline on the inside provides a niche for these bacteria
bricss 10y ago
Whata great days and parents for bacteries?! <:)
pwilsony 10y ago
This is totally misguided. If this develops into a widely used antibiotic it will eventually provoke immunity in its MRSA targets. These same targets will then have free rein in our noses. Not a good deal.
- dpark 10y ago
  30% of people already have MRSA in their noses. I'm not sure there's a realistic doom and gloom scenario here since if you've got MRSA in your nose, you don't have the lugdunin-producing bacteria anyway.

195 points by kungfudoi 10y ago

monocle 10y ago

First there was stool transplants. Now, we can have snot transplants.

toodlebunions 10y ago
Whatever works, right?
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Just so long as the two procedures stay completely separate.
jeffwass 10y ago
You can pick your friends. You can pick your nose. But you cannot pick your friend's nose... Until now!

Benjamin_Dobell 10y ago

Awesome research. But... > The researchers then checked snot from hospitalized patients. Of 187 samples, all but one were colonized by either S. aureus or S. lugdunensis > S. lugdunensis, was killing S. aureus. Its weapon of choice? A small compound dubbed lugdunin > The German researchers who performed the study have filed a patent for lugdunin Are we really allowing people to patent naturally occurring biological compounds these days? Shouldn't the patent be for specific treatments derived from their findings on lugdunin, not the compound itself?

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
You have to choose a system. If we don't want naturally-occurring compounds patented, but we want them researched for potential drug use, we need more public funding. Otherwise, we have to offer researchers and drug manufacturers an incentive to take risks with exploring these compounds. Barring lugdunin from being patented while providing no public funding would incentivise this group to withhold publication until they thought they'd found every commercially-reasonably derivation.
- Benjamin_Dobell 10y ago
  At least if they'd kept their findings secret, researchers could independently be researching the same thing. Now independent researchers won't want to touch lugdunin because they'll need to license the patent, however they won't know whether licensing the patent is worthwhile until they do their research. This will prevent further research, not encourage it.
  - doesnotexist 10y ago
    Are you sure about that? I would think that the patent wouldn't apply to non-commercial investigations or research. That is you would be free to synthesize or extract this chemical in a laboratory environment. However, if you wished to manufacture the drug for commercial purposes then you would need to license the patent.
    - pyre 10y ago
      Well, potential researchers will also have to weigh the possibility that they spend all of the time and effort to research other possibilities for it only to find out that after all of the licensing fees, etc they won't even be able to break even on the fruits of their research. It carries too high of a risk for financially-minded people (looking for a return on investment) to throw money at it.
      - hueving 10y ago
        >It carries too high of a risk for financially-minded people (looking for a return on investment) to throw money at it. As opposed to the risk of searching for some completely new thing that may not exist?
    - Benjamin_Dobell 10y ago
      You're right that it won't apply for non-commercial investigations. But how are you funding the investigation? It's typically funded by the proceeds generated from the research. Research is always hit and miss as to profitability, more miss than hit. Factor in potentially unknown licensing arrangements, even if you do have a "hit", and suddenly your research doesn't look like such a good idea.
rcar 10y ago
Most antibiotics are naturally occurring biological compounds (besides things like sulfonamides). Given how little upside there tends to be for developing new antibiotics vs. the public good that new ones can bring for treating resistant bugs, this is one of the very few areas where I'm firmly in favor of allowing patent protection.
chris_va 10y ago
Composition of matter patents got a lot harder for naturally isolated compounds circa 2014. We'll see if it gets granted. Having said that, a patent for general anti-biotic+matter is probably valid and it's unlikely that this compound will be used for much else.
SocratesV 10y ago
Could they be patenting it to prevent others from doing so? They'll probably make some money out of it, to fund more research, but hopefully any deal with pharmaceutical companies should have some pricing clause to make this widely affordable to public health services.
amelius 10y ago
You know something is wrong with the IP system when companies start patenting snot.
JshWright 10y ago
> Shouldn't the patent be for specific treatments derived from their findings on lugdunin, not the compound itself? I would expect the patent to be on the process for isolating or synthesizing the compound.
rayiner 10y ago
Under the Supreme Court's decision in Myriad (which held you can't patent naturally-occurring gene sequences by themselves), you probably can't patent a naturally-occurring biological compound.
- pc2g4d 10y ago
  ... in the United States. They filed for a patent under the European patent regime, right?
  - rayiner 10y ago
    I should have RTFA'ed.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
Well if it is patented and the terms are very lenient, because it's owned by the government, then that's the best of both worlds since it prevents some other company from patenting it and charging heaps and then it gets put into the public domain in 20 years (or whatever the term is).

im4w1l 10y ago

Wont using this be long term harmful to our nasal health, as bacteria acquire immunity?

adrianN 10y ago
Dieing of MRSA is also harmful.
heavypurity 10y ago
This is the first thing I think of when I read this too. I am worried this will train bacteria to be resistant to natural immune defense mechanism of human... : (
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rjbwork 10y ago
  Yeah...really, how COULDN'T that happen?
dpark 10y ago
It could happen, but we already have 30% of people with MRSA colonized in their noses. If we develop a new antibiotic that saves thousands or millions of lives, but the MRSA colonization number climbs to, say, 60%, will that be a net gain? I think so, since in general having MRSA colonized is not problematic, and that number is climbing anyway.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

> The researchers then checked snot from hospitalized patients. Of 187 samples, all but one were colonized by either S. aureus or S. lugdunensis, but not both. The researchers think where one species grows, the other can’t. How does S. aureus prevent S. lugdunesis from invading?

ajuc 10y ago
Maybe lugdunesis is killed by some antibiotics that aureus is resistant to?

encoderer 10y ago

Life finds a way?

iofj 10y ago

This does nothing to solve the real problem. The issue isn't (or wasn't) that we couldn't cure MRSA at all, it was a gradual evolution. In the 1960's we had 5 working drugs that would kill essentially any bacteria. And then we had 4. We discovered new ones, at one point I believe up to 7. But resistance made it go down pretty much by one per decade, but each next one ended faster. And then it hit zero, in 2012 I believe. Now we may (maybe) be back up to one. Big whoop. Not going to last. The problem is that evolution is out-researching us, the problem is that we're losing the war, not any particular battle. Antibiotics used to last 3-5 decades. Now we're down to years. While we do find new antibiotics on a regular basis, the problem is the speed of adaptation. The problem is that science is losing/has lost the "battle with darkness" as it was called 700 years ago. We are now in the situation that there are people dying because they entered hospitals for unrelated reasons (where they were exposed to these bacteria). The problem is that we need to let millions of people die of curable diseases constantly or risk a Spanish flu like incident that can be reasonably expected to kill somewhere between 500 million and a billion humans today.

ss248 10y ago
"The problem is that we need to let millions of people die of curable diseases constantly" Not the case at all. Biggest use of antibiotics today is in food production(agriculture etc.), not in hospitals. And it's also completely unregulated. "The problem is that evolution is out-researching us" Evolution also has a simple rule: "Use it or lose it". So don't be afraid. There are ways around acquired immunity.
- refurb 10y ago
  And it's also completely unregulated. I think the FDA might disagree with you on that point.
- djrogers 10y ago
  >Biggest use of antibiotics today is in food production(agriculture etc.), not in hospitals. And it's also completely unregulated. Completely false - antibiotic (and all drug) use in animals is absolutely regulated in nearly all countries, including the US [1,2,3]. Said regulations may not be what you'd like, but to claim they don't exist is silly. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock#Regulatory_context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock#Re... [2]http://modernfarmer.com/2015/10/california-antibiotic-livestock-regulations/ http://modernfarmer.com/2015/10/california-antibiotic-livest... [3]https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/06/03/2015-13393/veterinary-feed-directive https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/06/03/2015-133... edit formatting

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

lifeisstillgood 10y ago

Now we need a globally agreed system of anti-biotic triage - you can have anti-biotics, but only administered in hospital, signed off by two doctors and with these life threatening conditions. Treat them with care this time round

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> signed off by two doctors And then we get to complain about the excess bureaucracy in healthcare!
ajuc 10y ago
That would overwhelm our hospital system. It's possible to find middle ground, and I think comprehensive IT systems for all doctors with real-time forbidden drugs lists and epidemia tracking would make this much easier. It's even possible to divide hospitals into "different drug is forbidden here", and when someone has MRSA - put him in a hospital where the drugs that doesn't work on him - are banned anyway. And use "last ditch" drugs only in these hospitals. And of course the main thing is to stop abusing antibiotics for agriculture.
- lifeisstillgood 10y ago
  I am advocating a more restrictive and considered prescription regieme - specifically only allowing hospitals to prescribe is an example not a policy decision That's said I am under convinced it would overwhelm hospitals. Hospitals seem overwhelmed to me because A&E is a faster and more efficient way "into" the system than community based care or other approaches. The common case is elderly care - almost no funding for in home nursing help, hard to get through the process, and elderly struggle on until a manageable chronic complaint turns acute, leading to ambulance, A&E admittance and a struggle for scare beds in wards. Whereas the hospital probably could have been avoided through treatment at home / locally. Until we pay for community systems we won't relive the pressure on hospitals. And this out centre of excellence will just be fire fighting. (Excuse the sudden rant - not sure where that came from :-)
asuffield 10y ago

0n34n7 10y ago

Which is why I always eat my boogers, and seldom, if ever, get sick.

dest 10y ago

An interesting point would be that if S. aureus becomes resistant to lugdunin (a matter of a few years maybe), S. lugdunensis might evolve naturally to find a new antibiotic. So a similar study in a few years might lead to a new antibiotic molecule targetting the mutated S. aureus. Is there hope for this or is it nonsense?

taneq 10y ago
I was just thinking something similar - maybe the future for bacterium-specific treatments isn't to try and find a new antibiotic, but rather to pit different nasty bacteria against each other in an endless in-vitro cage match, then analyze the winner to learn their tricks?
- Practicality 10y ago
  The difficulty is creating a suitable environment. There are a lot specifics about a nose that are difficult to duplicate. Other than that, the idea is perfectly viable.

mvanvoorden 10y ago

Partly relevant: a few months ago they discovered bacteria in beards that also kill MRSA: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/beards-good-for-health-more-hygienic-bacteria-resistant-than-shaven-skin-study-finds-a6823461.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/beards-good-for-he...

arviewer 10y ago
Interesting read. What I don't understand is why other body hair is not mentioned, and if that has the same effect. If not, what makes a beard different?
- mvanvoorden 10y ago
  I assume because it's around the mouth. Food passes, some of that will stay in the beard, allowing for different cultures to grow than elsewhere.
  - sdkjfwiluf 10y ago
    or, the change in acidity from acid on the outside to alkaline on the inside provides a niche for these bacteria

bricss 10y ago

Whata great days and parents for bacteries?! <:)

pwilsony 10y ago

This is totally misguided. If this develops into a widely used antibiotic it will eventually provoke immunity in its MRSA targets. These same targets will then have free rein in our noses. Not a good deal.

dpark 10y ago
30% of people already have MRSA in their noses. I'm not sure there's a realistic doom and gloom scenario here since if you've got MRSA in your nose, you don't have the lugdunin-producing bacteria anyway.