• Question: antibiotics are over prescribed and resistance is occuring. Are there any new antibiotics that are nearly ready to go on to the market?

    Asked by Ellen to Ceri, Marikka, Matt, Rob, Sally on 11 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Ceri Dare

      Ceri Dare answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Scientists are working on new antibiotics all the time, but unfortunately it is difficult to develop a new medicine – even if a drug works well in the lab, it might later be found not to be safe, or not to work so well in humans.

      This is why my work is aimed at making the existing antibiotics we already have work better, and preventing resistance getting worse.

    • Photo: Sally Cutler

      Sally Cutler answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      There are some under development and going through various trials, but it takes a few years to check out new antibiotics and to ensure that they will be safe to use in humans.

    • Photo: Marikka Beecroft

      Marikka Beecroft answered on 12 Nov 2014:

      There are new ones being developed all the time but it takes a while to pass through various testing stages. 2 years ago I heard that a new never been seen before antibiotic was being developed from soil samples and was picked by a company for use and development, but it still hasn’t been on the market as it’s still in testing to see if its safe and effective. It could be pretty close though to being for public use!

    • Photo: Robert Hampson

      Robert Hampson answered on 12 Nov 2014:

      If you look at previous antibiotic developments, many new classes of antibiotic drugs were produced in the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s. However, since the 1970’s, we’ve only really produced 2 new classes of antibiotic.

      Many new antibiotics are being licenced and used all the time, however, part of the problem is that they are based on the mechanisms of older antibiotics (they are part of the same class) and resistance has already started evolving to the older antibiotics. Although the newer modified version may be more effective now, they very quickly succumb to the emergence of full resistance.

      What we really need is completely new classes of antibiotics looking at completely new targets. There will be very little pre-existing resistance around if we can hit a target which is truly new and has not been exploited before.

      This strategy is much more risky though as by finding and targeting something new or different, you have no means of knowing whether or not it will actually work until after you’ve done the research (which costs a lot of money). The new strategy may fail to kill the bacteria or it may kill human cells as well.

      As far as I am aware, although there are many minor developments of old antibiotics coming through clinical trials, there are no truly new antibiotic classes ready to go.

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