Researchers from San Francisco-based Genentech have reported a method for combating methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus that is 1,000 times more effective than vancomycin, a drug most often used to treat internal MRSA infections.
One reason MRSA infections prove so deadly is the speed with which the bacteria enters and populates host cells following infection, according to Nature. The new method, which was tested in mouse cells, leverages antibiotics that hitch a ride inside of cells on the very bacteria they will later kill.
Here are four things to know about the findings.
• The technique was borrowed from a concept used in cancer treatment in which an antibody designed to attach to particular cells is connected to a cancer-fighting drug. In this study, researchers attached an antibody designed to work against Staph to a modified antibiotic used to treat tuberculosis.
• The team reported the combination antibody-antibiotic drug was highly effective at killing drug-resistant Staph after it infected cells in mice.
• Sanjeev Mariathasan, an immunologist at Genentech, compared the treatment to a stealth bomb — the antibiotic components dock with Staph bacteria and once the bacteria invade the mouse cells, enzymes break the bond between the antibiotic and the antibody, activating the treatment within the cell.
• In an article accompanying the study, Wolf-Dietrich Hardt, a microbiologist from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, wrote that the ability to tap this type of resource could result in new classes of antibiotics and "antibody conjugates" that could be used in the fight against antimicrobial resistance.