SCIENTISTS FROM University College Cork and Teagasc have, together with Canadian colleagues, identified a new antibiotic which combats the potentially fatal hospital-acquired superbug, Clostridium difficile.
Researchers at the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre at UCC and Teagasc Food Research Centre in Moorepark near Fermoy worked with a team at the University of Alberta to identify thuricin CD.
C difficile infections arise as a direct result of disturbing gut bacteria following antibiotic treatment. Treatment failures and recurrence of infection are common and there have also been reports of the emergence of strains of C difficile with increased resistance to antibiotics used at present, said Prof Colin Hill, who specialises in microbial food safety at the UCC centre.
The new antibiotic, antimicrobial peptide, could reduce the risk of disease recurrence compared with that of broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment because it spares the normal gut flora that helps limit C difficile growth, he said.
Prof Hill and colleagues Prof Paul Ross and Mary Rea from Teagasc at Moorepark analysed the bacterial populations that keep C difficile at bay during normal conditions, with the goal of finding a compound that could specifically eliminate the organism.
They screened more than 30,000 bacteria isolated from the human gut and discovered that the new antibiotic consists of two distinct peptides that act together to kill a wide range of clinical C difficile.
“This specificity of thuricin towards Clostridium difficile is a key advantage that it has over other antibiotic treatments,” said Prof Hill, adding that tests have shown it doesn’t have an impact on other bacteria in the gut.
Prof Hill said the research team had developed a glass colon model and believe that the compound should also work in living people but a way to deliver the antibiotic still needs to be developed.
Details of the research, which was funded by Science Foundation Ireland, have been published as two papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.