A confocal microscopy image of macrophages treated with MTX (cyan) that have eaten bacteria (magenta) Image Credit: © Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) |
By combining an antibiotic with an anti-cancer agent, an international team has developed a treatment capable of circumventing the antibiotic resistance of the bacterium Enterococcus faecalis.
Antibiotic resistance is one of the world’s most pressing health challenges: in 2019, nearly 5 million people died from an infection associated with or attributed to antibiotic resistance. A research consortium involving the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has tackled the potentially deadly Enterococcus faecalis bacterium, most strains of which have developed resistance to common antibiotics. The scientists have developed an innovative strategy that consists of adding mitoxantrone, an anti-cancer agent, to vancomycin, the main antibiotic used in this context. The combination of these two drugs targets simultaneously the bacteria and the human immune system, and circumvents resistance. These promising results can be read in the journal Science Advances.