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A new type of antibiotic targets a drug-resistant bacterium

Infections caused by drug-resistant strains of the bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii have been hard to treat in the clinic. A new class of antibiotics has been identified with the potential to tackle these microbes.
  1. Morgan K. Gugger

    1. Morgan K. Gugger is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.

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  2. Paul J. Hergenrother

    1. Paul J. Hergenrother is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.

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Drug-resistant bacterial infections are a looming threat to global public health and increasingly contribute to the death of infected individuals1. Particularly concerning are illnesses caused by ‘Gram-negative’ bacteria, because these microbes are encased in both inner and outer membranes that are challenging for most antibiotics to cross2,3. An antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacterium called carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB) is particularly difficult to treat, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved any new classes of antibiotic for harmful Gram-negative bacteria in more than 50 years. Treatment options for CRAB infections continue to dwindle as mortality rates are rising, with some estimated death rates reaching approximately 50% for invasive infections4. Writing in Nature, Zampaloni et al.5 and Pahil et al.6 report progress in the effort to develop much-needed treatments.

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Nature 625, 451-452 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03988-2

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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