University of Oxford researchers found prospective solution to antibiotic resistance in bacteria

The researchers developed a new small molecule to make resistant bacteria more susceptible to antibiotics and also suppress the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

A new study led by researchers at the University of Oxford offered hope for the discovery of a small molecule that can work with antibiotics to suppress the evolution of drug resistance in bacteria.

In this study, the researchers studied a series of molecules first which increase the sensitivity of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) to antibiotics, and to prevent the MRSA SOS response. MRSA is a bacteria which lives on the skin, but when it gets inside the body, it can cause a serious infection that needs immediate treatment with antibiotics.

Dr Thomas Lanyon-Hogg, Principal Investigator at Oxford’s Department of Pharmacology said: ‘This is a great example of what can be achieved through interdisciplinary collaboration between microbiologists in the IOI and chemical biologists in Pharmacology. The AMR crisis presents technical obstacles in numerous areas, and if the challenges we face as scientists are not confined to a single scientific discipline, then the solutions will not be either."

"In a key result, the team then tested the susceptibility of bacteria treated with ciprofloxacin over a series of days to determine how quickly resistance to the antibiotic was developing, either with or without OXF-077. They found that the emergence of resistance to ciprofloxacin was significantly suppressed in bacteria treated with OXF-077, compared to those not treated with OXF-077. This is the first study to demonstrate that an inhibitor of the SOS response can suppress the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Moreover, when resistant bacteria previously exposed to ciprofloxacin were treated with OXF-077, it restored their sensitivity to the antibiotic to the same level as bacteria that had not developed resistance," said the official statement.

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Professor Philip Torr, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, a co-author on the paper published in Science, said “The world agreed during the last AI summit that we needed action, but now it is time to go from vague proposals to concrete commitments. This paper provides many important recommendations for what companies and governments should commit to do.”

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