30 years have passed since no new molecule was created for the treatment of infectious diseases especially of bacterial origin; and every day increases the resistance of pathogens to existing antibiotics, caused mainly by the abuse and abuse of them.
The rates of bacterial resistance have increased so much that the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) estimates that mortality related to bacterial infections will increase more than 10-15 times by the year 2050 if other treatment strategies can not be found. in front of the already known super bacteria.
Since 2017 and the beginning of 2018, a biologist-chemist call Sean Brady, with his team of researchers from Rockefeller University (New York), took samples of the soil, approximately 2000 types, to cultivate and sequence bacterial DNA and thus be able to find effective substances against other microorganisms. And finally on a sample of land taken from the desert they found the ** MALACIDINS **.
*Malacidins * corresponds to an acronym (metagenomic acidic lipopeptide antibiotic-cidins), and as a curious fact, in Latin "Mal" means bad and "Cide" means kill. The scientists do not really know what bacteria created the element but they managed to sequence their structure and are ready to replicate it artificially.
Malacidins will be potent bactericidal agents that are distant families of daptomycin, and its mechanism of action is based on using calcium from the intercellular medium for the destruction of the bacterial wall. Malacidins have a potent effect on multidrug-resistant gram-positive bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Its efficacy was tested in rats infected with MRSA, observing that between 24-72 hours there was no bacterial load, even exposed to the same bacteria at suboptimal doses for 20 continuous days and the development of resistance mechanisms was not observed. Likewise, the antibiotic in question showed no significant toxicity against the cells of mammals.
This research opens a world of possibilities in the discovery and manufacture in synthetic form of new therapeutic strategies, based on the microorganisms that we can find in the soil.
Research on Malacidins can be found at the Nature Biology Journal (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-018-0110-1).
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