Sir, - I would like to comment on the article in the Weekend section on 25th May: "No more Magic Bullets". The article was correct in pointing out the dangers of multiple antibiotic resistance in bacteria that cause TB, pneumonia and hospital acquired infection (MRSA). However, I would like to correct the impression that nothing is being done to anticipate the "doomsday scenario" of untreatable bacterial infections.
While there will be few, if any, new antibiotics in the immediate future, there is a great deal of research both into novel approaches to discovering the next generation of antibiotics, and into new vaccines.
Several major pharmaceutical companies and a number of small biotechnology companies in the US are taking a completely different approach to finding new antibiotics. Instead of screening thousands of compounds and hoping to find a new antibiotic, they are looking for potential targets within the microbe with the intention of designing specific inhibitors. While rational design of antibiotics for bacterial disease is only just beginning, recent developments with inhibitors of the HIV virus protease, which are currently undergoing clinical trials, show that this approach is feasible and that it can deliver new drugs very quickly.
The urgency of the situation is recognised by the EU, which has targeted vaccine development in its biomedical and biotechnology research programmes (generating immunity to infections disease precludes the necessity for antibiotics). Vaccines to prevent streptococcal pneumonia, MRSA infection in hospitalised patients, as well as ways of improving the BCG vaccine against TB, are being studied. - Yours etc.
Microbiology Department,
Moyne Institute of Preventive
Medicine.
Trinity College, Dublin.