New antibiotic discovery ‘could be biggest breakthrough in decades’

Researchers in the US have identified a potentially groundbreaking new type of antibiotic that could mark one of the biggest developments in this field for decades.

The team from Northeastern University in Boston made the discovery via an innovative technique that involves using an electronic chip to grow microbes in soil, before isolating their chemical compounds.

Using this method, the researchers identified 25 new types of antibiotic, including the highly promising new agent teixobactin, which has shown strong potential in combating bacterial infections such as tuberculosis, septicaemia and clostridium difficile.

This could be a hugely important discovery due to the fact that no new classes of antibiotic have been discovered since 1987. 

Professor Kim Lewis, director of the Antimicrobial Discovery Centre at the university, said: "Teixobactin shows how we can adopt an alternative strategy and develop compounds to which bacteria are not resistant."

The discovery is also timely, as there is currently a concerted worldwide push to develop solutions to the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance.