Scientists today hailed a potentially major advance against antibiotic resistance with the development of what could be the first new class of antibiotics in 25 years.
If approved for use in humans the new compound, called teixobactin, promises to combat pathogens that have already gained resistance to all available treatments.
Equally importantly, the novel method by which teixobactin was discovered also opens up a whole new mechanism by which scientists can hunt for other antibiotics.
The discovery, outlined in the journal Nature, comes after David Cameron warned that the world could be “cast back into the dark ages of medicine” unless we started taking action to combat growing resistance to antibiotics.
Teixobactin is not, however, able to kill some common strains of bacteria such as…