Rutgers Health research has uncovered why a relatively new antibiotic for tuberculosis (TB) works against multidrug-resistant strains, potentially inspiring improved treatments and drug development strategies. The study from scientists at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and other institutions found that deficiencies in a critical enzyme make tuberculosis bacteria that resist old antibiotics more vulnerable to the new antibiotic bedaquiline.
“Understanding how a drug works could help us design new molecules that work better and prevent bacteria from becoming resistant,” said Jason Yang, assistant professor at the medical school and senior author of the study. Tuberculosis still ranks among the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, killing more than 1.5 million people annually. Multidrug-resistant TB, defined as disease that is resistant to at least two first-line drugs, poses a rising threat to global TB control efforts.
Approved in 2012 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), bedaquiline was the first new TB drug in more than 40 years. It works well against multidrug-resistant TB strains, but the mechanisms behind its effectiveness weren’t fully understood. To read the full story.