• Question: Are there solutions to fight against antibiotics resistance ? Is the research about bacteria mechanisms would allow to find new treatments against pan-resistant bacteria ?

    Asked by julia.deleris to Ceri, Marikka, Matt, Rob, Sally on 13 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by marieescudie.
    • Photo: Robert Hampson

      Robert Hampson answered on 13 Nov 2014:


      Yes, sometimes. Penicillin (the first antibiotic) stopped bacteria cross linking the peptidoglycans which make up their cell walls. This makes the cell wall weak and stops them making more cell wall. If the bacteria decides to try and reproduce (by splitting into two), the cell wall falls off. This normally kills the bacteria (it would be like your skin falling off). Bacteria started resisting this by massively overproducing the enzyme which crosslinks the cell wall peptidoglycans and by producing proteins which bind to the penicillin making it useless. There were also pumps which pump penicillin out of the cell and pores in the cell wall which let it diffuse out.

      Some newish drugs (clavulanic acid for example) bind the proteins which previously stopped penicillins working and so can make the penicillin work normally again.

      This strategy is about making old antibiotics work again. There are also people trying to develop antibiotics which work in completely new ways. Because the bacteria has never been attacked in these new ways before there would be less likelihood of resistance. There are also many people trying to control the distribution of antibiotics to try and control the emergence of antibiotic resistance in the first place.

    • Photo: Ceri Dare

      Ceri Dare answered on 13 Nov 2014:


      Yes. I use maths to work out how to swap antibiotics around so the bacteria get confused and can’t build up resistance to any one type of antibiotic.

      I don’t work on new antibiotics though, just making the existing ones work better and last longer – maybe the others could tell you about their research?

    • Photo: Sally Cutler

      Sally Cutler answered on 13 Nov 2014:


      The solutions is difficult to answer, but we might get to this by understanding the mechanisms of resistance. The challenge is to find something that will kill the microbe and not us, so you look for a selective target possessed by the microbe and not our cells. This means you need a lot of knowledge of how microbes work and their structure. This can give us clues of how to inhibit or even kill them. Resistance usually develops as a means of escape from selective pressure, so the more you use antibiotics the more resistance will happen. In this model, we should use them less to prolong their effective life. Problem is that antibiotics have been used in many ways – not just to treat sick people, but also to make animals gain weight more quickly for financial gain. This has gone on for years and now we are paying the price.

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