In the past, creating new antibiotics involved either purifying waste products from microorganisms, or chemically improving an existing antibiotic; researchers with PREPARE use powerful computers to analyze gene sequences of the harmful bacteria to pinpoint targets for new drugs.
Why some superbugs develop drug resistance
"It's easy for these bugs to develop resistance," explains Fiona Brinkman, a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. "With this genomics-based approach, we're looking at all the possible targets, and trying to find something new that the bacteria won't be able to develop resistance to so easily." The PREPARE team is concentrating its research efforts on certain bacterial proteins. "Our focus is to identify how proteins communicate within the bacterial cell," says Raymond See, scientific director for the PREPARE project.
"These proteins are like people [in that] they need to 'talk' to each other in order to perform their functions." Because such communication is critical to the bacteria's survival, the goal is to disable these highly "talkative" proteins, essentially disrupting their means of communication, says See. In addition, he says, these proteins don't mutate very easily, so they're much less likely to become drug-resistant. This makes them excellent drug targets. The project's scientists have already successfully disabled two of the MRSA target proteins, and hope to complete their analysis of this trial within the next few months to reveal more potential drugs to target MRSA.
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