New family of antibiotics discovered
Who says Big Pharma is all about marketing and not about research? Well, just about everyone, and this news doesn't necessarily prove the naysayers wrong, but it is certainly a welcome ray of light. MRSA, of course, is one of the nastiest bacterial scourges to ever confront medical researchers. The current arsenal of antibiotics capable of treating MRSA is quite small, and if the limited options are ineffective, you die.
Now there's a new antibiotic that shows a great deal of promise. Actually, a whole new class of antibiotics: the family platensimycin, only the third entirely new class of antibiotics discovered in the last 40 years. Rather than inhibiting cell wall synthesis, which is how most current antibiotics work, platensimycin inhibits an enzyme used in fatty acid formation:
It works by specifically inhibiting an enzyme called FabF, used in fatty acid formation in bacterial cells. These acids are the central building blocks of cell membranes and surfaces for bacteria.
"Platensimycin is the most potent inhibitor reported so far for FabF," said Eric Brown of McMaster University in Canada.
Many big pharmaceutical companies have pulled out of the antibiotic-discovery business. It's not especially profitable because finding new treatments is quite expensive, and the drugs that result are not new blockbusters, instead they are variations on older themes. Finding an entirely new family of antibiotics is especially surprising, and it will be fascinating to see how many new species of antibiotics it yields. You can bet that the other big manufacturers will be hopping on board the platensimycin gravy train as quickly as they can assemble research teams.
I should note that the new platensimycin-class antibiotics are still likely years away — the research hasn't even reached Phase I clinical trials yet.
[tags]Merck, platensimycin, MRSA, antibiotics, bacteria, drug discovery, big pharma[/tags]
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[...] Short-term thinking on the part of Lilly, specifically cited in the article as having given up on antibiotics, will lead to it having its lunch in that area eaten by Merck. Merck will have some rough days in the next five years, but they've also got one of the strongest, most well-diversified pipelines of any of the big drug companies, and that is what will ultimately power them through the mess they've created for themselves with Vioxx. Just about every significant breakthrough that I've covered here in the last month has been by Merck, many of them truly significant. [...]
Pingback by OnThePharm » “Pill Pushers” — science for salesmanship? — June 3, 2006 @ 11:10 pm
[...] Personally, I hope Merck wins the vast majority of their cases. I like them as a company, and with a rich pipeline (relative to their major competition), I think we'll see some interesting new therapies (Gardasil, platensinycin) come out of their labs, provided they aren't crippled by Vioxx litigation. We're a long way from the end of the Vioxx stories, but we're starting to see some emerging trends. That's a hopeful sign for everyone wanting to get past the whole thing. [...]
Pingback by Merck’s Vioxx litigation strategy is paying off :: OnThePharm — August 4, 2006 @ 12:19 pm