8 ms·

First new antibiotic in 30 years discovered in major breakthrough

198 points by walkingolof 10y ago

nerdponx 10y ago
What makes me nervous about this is that the antibiotic resistance paranoia will die out, and we'll just start using more antibiotics again.
- eivarv 10y ago
  It's not unlikely. But it's not really paranoia, though, as antibiotic resistance poses a real threat.
  - berntb 10y ago
    Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there really aren't those (diseases) out to get you... Alternatively -- are you paranoid enough? (Ah, this is the same old news first published last year, iirc. This was from January. This is from January 2015: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/first-new-antibiotic-in-30-years-could-be-key-to-beating-superbug-resistance-9963585.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/... ) Edit: To see more discussion over the last 18 months, google: teixobactin site:news.ycombinator.com. This seems the biggest story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852487
    - eivarv 10y ago
      I don't see how what you write is relevant; paranoia is unreasonable by its definition [1], as opposed to rational fear. [1]: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paranoia http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paranoia
      - berntb 10y ago
        You _almost_ got the joke, better than expected for a Norwegian. :-) For people outside of this mutual admiration society: This is funny since I'm Swedish -- Swedes/Norwegians used to tell bad "racist" jokes about each others. The level was really low, like "Why don't they use underwear when picking strawberries in Oslo? To keep the flies out of the face." (I always thought those were extra funny, since a relative of mine got promoted to general major for killing lots of Swedes in war in Norway a few centuries ago. :-) )
        eivarv 10y ago
        Hah! I got the gist of it, dear svenskejævel, but I mistook your sarcasm for bona fide paranoia ;) As for intra-Scandinavian relations: I think we can all agree that the Danes are the worst of us - and their language is just ridiculous [1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk
        berntb 10y ago
        For the non Scandinavians: Denmark is an old trade nation. When you do business with them, some innocent paragraphs in the contract usually end up with them earning lots more. And they think that is a bit too funny. At least, that is how the rest of the Nordic countries tend see them. Also, they are too friendly and too often in a good mood. Weird people, especially my relatives down there. They could almost be called "normal Europeans", or something. Probably get too much sun in the winter. (Most wars in Europe between two countries weren't France/England, it was Denmark/Sweden. Norway used to fight with the Danes. No one likes the Swedes, not even themselves.) Edit: I might add that the oil could probably have happened to nicer people, but the Norwegians really deserved a break after a hard history with bad farming and bad neighbours. :-) Edit 2: Sorry for chatting about irrelevant subjects on HN. Down votes are humbly accepted.
- martinko 10y ago
  Perhaps, but it is not like there is a significant wave of new antibiotics being discovered now.
kyriakos 10y ago
Once this gets approved for human use it should be put on lock down and be used only in extreme cases of resistant infections. Like a last resort cure to avoid the mistakes of the past and prolong it's usefulness.
- paulsutter 10y ago
  Notably, that's one reason there so little investment in antibiotic r&d. The concern is that sales of a new antibiotic could be very limited because of this very concern.
  - kyriakos 10y ago
    I haven't considered that but its indeed a valid point.
  - hollander 10y ago
    This only means that this research should be done by state funded universities and not left to commercial industries.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      That pretty much sums up all large technological shifts. They almost to a T seems to happen when there is a military need for them.
    - chimeracoder 10y ago
      > This only means that this research should be done by state funded universities and not left to commercial industries. As anybody who has worked in academia for long enough can tell you, state-funded universities are very much a "commercial industry" and are in no way exempt from market forces. There are a few extra layers of indirection, which slow them down, but the end result is the same.
    - random55643 10y ago
      This still requires for some company to produce the drug and get it approved by the FDA.
partycoder 10y ago
Discovery of teixobactin was announced in early 2015. It was done using isolation chips to culture Eleftheria terrae (temporary name), a bacterium discovered in 2014.
srunni 10y ago
The original paper, from January 2015: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7535/full/nature14098.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7535/full/nature1... And a more easily comprehensible summary of it: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/01/08/teixobactin_a_new_antibiotic_from_a_new_platform http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/01/08/tei... The most interesting part of this is how the compound was discovered: > A multichannel device, the iChip, was used to simultaneously isolate and grow uncultured bacteria. A sample of soil is diluted so that approximately one bacterial cell is delivered to a given channel, after which the device is covered with two semi-permeable membranes and placed back in the soil. Diffusion of nutrients and growth factors through the chambers enables growth of uncultured bacteria in their natural environment. The growth recovery by this method approaches 50%, as compared to 1% of cells from soil that will grow on a nutrient Petri dish. The iChip was originally described in an April 2010 paper (http://aem.asm.org/content/76/8/2445.long http://aem.asm.org/content/76/8/2445.long), and builds on earlier work from 2002 (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/296/5570/1127 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/296/5570/1127), along with advances in microfluidics.
owenfi 10y ago
Could antibiotics (especially anti-resistant antibiotics such as this) be used in a phased manner worldwide to help prevent resistant bacteria from gaining a foothold? Say a couple similarly potent (a few vectors to kill bacteria) antibiotics are found in the next 20-30 years. If the WHO encouraged/mandated that drug A was prescribed for the first 10 years, B for the next, then C before going back to A could we "confuse" the bacteria?
- walkingolof 10y ago
  Great question, love to hear the answer on this !
- iSnow 10y ago
  It would help. But when they are patented, the structure is in the open and anyone with good knowledge of synthesis can produce them, e.g. for treating livestock in China or for sale on the grey market in India.
  - Hondor 10y ago
    Or for treating livestock, chest pains and flu symptoms in America. Don't forget you'd need the government on side and America's doesn't have a good track record of cooperating with the rest of the world for the global good.
- wolfram74 10y ago
  The theory is sound [1], but as in many situations with a lot of different actors, you get some coordination problems. Already many countries have some rules about how and when you can use certain anti-biotics, and some countries completely ignore them, or ignore them when it's profitable (farmers, usually, from what I gather.[2]) Even given the variety of anti-biotics we have now, if they were on a kind of 4 or 5 year rotation schedule that was actually followed, given the reproductive rate of bacteria i suspect that would work anyways, so hoping for coordination would certainly help, a solution that wouldn't require humans being more cooperative would be greatly expanding the diversity of our anti-biotics. [1] http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/drug-resistant-bacteria-lose-resistance.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/d... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbcwi7SfZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbcwi7SfZE
grizzles 10y ago
Unsung heroes. Our civilization seems to have an addiction to dancing on the edge of a cliff. Thanks to heroes like these, we can dance a little longer. At least until the hot coals get us.
- chillydawg 10y ago
  Dancing on the edge is the economically sensible thing to do. Same reason you only spend so much on earth quake resistance if they only happen once every 50 years. Let the whole city fall down and rebuild is cheaper than an earthquake tax on everything every year.
  - neffy 10y ago
    A better idea is to have 2 cities - one built with earth quake resistance, and the other not - and give people the choice about which one to live in. Then it shouldn't take more than a couple of earthquake iterations to sort out the gene pool. The mistake you're making is to assume it's cheaper to build non-earthquake resistant structures. It's actually just another iteration of the cheap boot problem.[1] [1] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...
JulianMorrison 10y ago
Why are we as a culture not putting much more effort into bacteriophage therapy? It was big in the USSR but seems to have been ignored by contemporary medicine, despite having at least two major advantages against resistance - physical mode of action, and being capable of evolution itself.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  Bacteriophages are neat but we shouldn't pretend like it's totally surprising why they aren't used. For one, they are constantly evolving so it's very difficult to produce a well-defined stable bacteriophage. The version you test in clinical trials is often completely different from the one you'd get treated with a year later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy#Safety But more importantly, your comment is off-topic.
  - JulianMorrison 10y ago
    Hardly off topic when talking about the dearth of new antibiotics. As for constant evolution - just put known samples on ice? (I wonder if it would be possible to use DNA printing to load them with a tested genome?) Regardless though, they are unlikely to evolve towards uselessness, and they can't attack human cells, so, does it matter if they drifted some?
  - jnbiche 10y ago
    > But more importantly, your comment is off-topic. I'm just curious, how is it that you see this comment as off-topic? I'm confused.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      Bacteriophages are brought up every single time antibiotics are discussed, and always framed as some incredible low-hanging fruit left by the soviets that Americans have stubbornly neglected. I think you really need to keep the discussions more focused than that, especially when the article is about the development and impact of this particular antibiotic. Otherwise, we end up with the comments for every article touching on city design just rehashing the same arguments regarding car-pedestrian trade-offs ("Did you know that Big Auto had a master plan to kill off the LA street car system!?!?"), and the comments for every article on military jets bemoaning the loss of the A-10 Warthog.
_pmf_ 10y ago
Quick, to the pig troughs!
emn13 10y ago
I don't quite understand why this is news now. It's been amply published in academic and popular media (including tech-leaning places like http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/a-new-kind-of-antibiotic-that-kills-many-drug-resistant-bacteria/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/a-new-kind-of-antibio...). Has there been some new development?
Jean-Philipe 10y ago
> The lack of new drugs coupled with over-prescribing has led to bacteria becoming increasingly resistant to modern medicines. The article doesn't mention meat industry as the biggest consumer of antibiotics.
jbb555 10y ago
"could be available within five years." Ah, the usual codeword for "this won't happen"

198 points by walkingolof 10y ago

What makes me nervous about this is that the antibiotic resistance paranoia will die out, and we'll just start using more antibiotics again.

eivarv 10y ago
It's not unlikely. But it's not really paranoia, though, as antibiotic resistance poses a real threat.
- berntb 10y ago
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there really aren't those (diseases) out to get you... Alternatively -- are you paranoid enough? (Ah, this is the same old news first published last year, iirc. This was from January. This is from January 2015: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/first-new-antibiotic-in-30-years-could-be-key-to-beating-superbug-resistance-9963585.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/... ) Edit: To see more discussion over the last 18 months, google: teixobactin site:news.ycombinator.com. This seems the biggest story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852487
  - eivarv 10y ago
    I don't see how what you write is relevant; paranoia is unreasonable by its definition [1], as opposed to rational fear. [1]: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paranoia http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paranoia
    - berntb 10y ago
      You _almost_ got the joke, better than expected for a Norwegian. :-) For people outside of this mutual admiration society: This is funny since I'm Swedish -- Swedes/Norwegians used to tell bad "racist" jokes about each others. The level was really low, like "Why don't they use underwear when picking strawberries in Oslo? To keep the flies out of the face." (I always thought those were extra funny, since a relative of mine got promoted to general major for killing lots of Swedes in war in Norway a few centuries ago. :-) )
      - eivarv 10y ago
        Hah! I got the gist of it, dear svenskejævel, but I mistook your sarcasm for bona fide paranoia ;) As for intra-Scandinavian relations: I think we can all agree that the Danes are the worst of us - and their language is just ridiculous [1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk
        berntb 10y ago
        For the non Scandinavians: Denmark is an old trade nation. When you do business with them, some innocent paragraphs in the contract usually end up with them earning lots more. And they think that is a bit too funny. At least, that is how the rest of the Nordic countries tend see them. Also, they are too friendly and too often in a good mood. Weird people, especially my relatives down there. They could almost be called "normal Europeans", or something. Probably get too much sun in the winter. (Most wars in Europe between two countries weren't France/England, it was Denmark/Sweden. Norway used to fight with the Danes. No one likes the Swedes, not even themselves.) Edit: I might add that the oil could probably have happened to nicer people, but the Norwegians really deserved a break after a hard history with bad farming and bad neighbours. :-) Edit 2: Sorry for chatting about irrelevant subjects on HN. Down votes are humbly accepted.
martinko 10y ago
Perhaps, but it is not like there is a significant wave of new antibiotics being discovered now.

kyriakos 10y ago

Once this gets approved for human use it should be put on lock down and be used only in extreme cases of resistant infections. Like a last resort cure to avoid the mistakes of the past and prolong it's usefulness.

paulsutter 10y ago
Notably, that's one reason there so little investment in antibiotic r&d. The concern is that sales of a new antibiotic could be very limited because of this very concern.
- kyriakos 10y ago
  I haven't considered that but its indeed a valid point.
- hollander 10y ago
  This only means that this research should be done by state funded universities and not left to commercial industries.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    That pretty much sums up all large technological shifts. They almost to a T seems to happen when there is a military need for them.
  - chimeracoder 10y ago
    > This only means that this research should be done by state funded universities and not left to commercial industries. As anybody who has worked in academia for long enough can tell you, state-funded universities are very much a "commercial industry" and are in no way exempt from market forces. There are a few extra layers of indirection, which slow them down, but the end result is the same.
  - random55643 10y ago
    This still requires for some company to produce the drug and get it approved by the FDA.

partycoder 10y ago

Discovery of teixobactin was announced in early 2015. It was done using isolation chips to culture Eleftheria terrae (temporary name), a bacterium discovered in 2014.

srunni 10y ago

The original paper, from January 2015: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7535/full/nature14098.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7535/full/nature1... And a more easily comprehensible summary of it: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/01/08/teixobactin_a_new_antibiotic_from_a_new_platform http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/01/08/tei... The most interesting part of this is how the compound was discovered: > A multichannel device, the iChip, was used to simultaneously isolate and grow uncultured bacteria. A sample of soil is diluted so that approximately one bacterial cell is delivered to a given channel, after which the device is covered with two semi-permeable membranes and placed back in the soil. Diffusion of nutrients and growth factors through the chambers enables growth of uncultured bacteria in their natural environment. The growth recovery by this method approaches 50%, as compared to 1% of cells from soil that will grow on a nutrient Petri dish. The iChip was originally described in an April 2010 paper (http://aem.asm.org/content/76/8/2445.long http://aem.asm.org/content/76/8/2445.long), and builds on earlier work from 2002 (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/296/5570/1127 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/296/5570/1127), along with advances in microfluidics.

owenfi 10y ago

Could antibiotics (especially anti-resistant antibiotics such as this) be used in a phased manner worldwide to help prevent resistant bacteria from gaining a foothold? Say a couple similarly potent (a few vectors to kill bacteria) antibiotics are found in the next 20-30 years. If the WHO encouraged/mandated that drug A was prescribed for the first 10 years, B for the next, then C before going back to A could we "confuse" the bacteria?

walkingolof 10y ago
Great question, love to hear the answer on this !
iSnow 10y ago
It would help. But when they are patented, the structure is in the open and anyone with good knowledge of synthesis can produce them, e.g. for treating livestock in China or for sale on the grey market in India.
- Hondor 10y ago
  Or for treating livestock, chest pains and flu symptoms in America. Don't forget you'd need the government on side and America's doesn't have a good track record of cooperating with the rest of the world for the global good.
wolfram74 10y ago
The theory is sound [1], but as in many situations with a lot of different actors, you get some coordination problems. Already many countries have some rules about how and when you can use certain anti-biotics, and some countries completely ignore them, or ignore them when it's profitable (farmers, usually, from what I gather.[2]) Even given the variety of anti-biotics we have now, if they were on a kind of 4 or 5 year rotation schedule that was actually followed, given the reproductive rate of bacteria i suspect that would work anyways, so hoping for coordination would certainly help, a solution that wouldn't require humans being more cooperative would be greatly expanding the diversity of our anti-biotics. [1] http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/drug-resistant-bacteria-lose-resistance.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/d... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbcwi7SfZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbcwi7SfZE

grizzles 10y ago

Unsung heroes. Our civilization seems to have an addiction to dancing on the edge of a cliff. Thanks to heroes like these, we can dance a little longer. At least until the hot coals get us.

chillydawg 10y ago
Dancing on the edge is the economically sensible thing to do. Same reason you only spend so much on earth quake resistance if they only happen once every 50 years. Let the whole city fall down and rebuild is cheaper than an earthquake tax on everything every year.
- neffy 10y ago
  A better idea is to have 2 cities - one built with earth quake resistance, and the other not - and give people the choice about which one to live in. Then it shouldn't take more than a couple of earthquake iterations to sort out the gene pool. The mistake you're making is to assume it's cheaper to build non-earthquake resistant structures. It's actually just another iteration of the cheap boot problem.[1] [1] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...

JulianMorrison 10y ago

Why are we as a culture not putting much more effort into bacteriophage therapy? It was big in the USSR but seems to have been ignored by contemporary medicine, despite having at least two major advantages against resistance - physical mode of action, and being capable of evolution itself.

jessriedel 10y ago
Bacteriophages are neat but we shouldn't pretend like it's totally surprising why they aren't used. For one, they are constantly evolving so it's very difficult to produce a well-defined stable bacteriophage. The version you test in clinical trials is often completely different from the one you'd get treated with a year later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy#Safety But more importantly, your comment is off-topic.
- JulianMorrison 10y ago
  Hardly off topic when talking about the dearth of new antibiotics. As for constant evolution - just put known samples on ice? (I wonder if it would be possible to use DNA printing to load them with a tested genome?) Regardless though, they are unlikely to evolve towards uselessness, and they can't attack human cells, so, does it matter if they drifted some?
- jnbiche 10y ago
  > But more importantly, your comment is off-topic. I'm just curious, how is it that you see this comment as off-topic? I'm confused.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    Bacteriophages are brought up every single time antibiotics are discussed, and always framed as some incredible low-hanging fruit left by the soviets that Americans have stubbornly neglected. I think you really need to keep the discussions more focused than that, especially when the article is about the development and impact of this particular antibiotic. Otherwise, we end up with the comments for every article touching on city design just rehashing the same arguments regarding car-pedestrian trade-offs ("Did you know that Big Auto had a master plan to kill off the LA street car system!?!?"), and the comments for every article on military jets bemoaning the loss of the A-10 Warthog.

_pmf_ 10y ago

Quick, to the pig troughs!

emn13 10y ago

I don't quite understand why this is news now. It's been amply published in academic and popular media (including tech-leaning places like http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/a-new-kind-of-antibiotic-that-kills-many-drug-resistant-bacteria/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/a-new-kind-of-antibio...). Has there been some new development?

Jean-Philipe 10y ago

> The lack of new drugs coupled with over-prescribing has led to bacteria becoming increasingly resistant to modern medicines. The article doesn't mention meat industry as the biggest consumer of antibiotics.

jbb555 10y ago

"could be available within five years." Ah, the usual codeword for "this won't happen"