Antibiotic resistant bacteria are a threat to human lives, and yet the development of new drugs to treat bacterial infections is slow. A group of proven drugs used in cancer treatment for decades could possibly be the solution. A new class of antibiotics is now being developed by researchers at Linköping University, Sweden.
Many drugs and drug candidates have proven highly effective in killing bacteria or tumor cells. The problem is that they also harm the patient, and they are therefore used very sparingly or not at all. When used to treat for instance cancer, they are delivered directly into the blood and spread throughout the body.
Over the past ten years, Frank Hernandez and his colleagues have made several discoveries paving the way for the method they developed to package nucleoside analogs so that these can be delivered in a safer way. They have, in multiple studies, examined the properties of a type of proteins called nucleases.
In their current study, the LiU researchers demonstrate how it works. They use the TOUCAN strategy on mice to kill Staphylococcus aureuswith the nucleoside analog floxuridine, which is used in health care to treat for instance colon cancer.
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