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PNAs can be introduced to interrupt the process in which DNA is converted into protein or other useful biological molecules necessary for life.
Kristen Eller,
The Facile Accelerated Specific Therapeutic (FAST) platform can produce therapies against multidrug-resistant bacteria in under a week.
Kristen Eller, CC BY-ND
Why it matters
Bacteria’s adaptation to survive current antibiotics, or antibiotic resistance, is on the rise.
Medicine’s current arsenal of treatments mostly consist of naturally occurring antibiotics that were isolated more than 30 years ago. Discovery of new antibiotics in nature has stagnated while bacteria continue to evolve and evade current treatments. And even if scientists were to find a new natural antibiotic, research shows that bacteria will begin to develop resistance within as little as 10 years, leaving us in the same predicament as before.
New types of therapies need to be considered for a post-antibiotic era, a time when our arsenal of antibiotics is no longer effective. By using a system that can target specific bacteria and be continuously modified based on emerging resistance patterns, doctors would no longer have to rely on chance discoveries. Treatments can adapt with bacteria.
What still isn’t known
Although we explore multiple characteristics that determine which RNA sequences are the best targets, more research is necessary to identify the most effective PNA therapeutics against multidrug-resistant bacteria. As our study only tested our new strategy on cell cultures in the lab, we’ll also need to see how it works in living animals to maximize the effectiveness of this kind of treatment.
What’s next
Our team is currently testing the technology in different animal models against different types of infections. We are also exploring other PNA delivery options, including adapting our bacterial delivery system to probiotic strains so it can integrate with the existing healthy bacteria population in the body.
With further development, our goal is to adapt the platform to target diseases that also use the same basic genetic processes as bacteria, such as viral infections or cancer.
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Kristen Eller, PhD Candidate in Chemical Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.