An unusual method for producing antibiotics may help to solve an urgent global problem: the rise in infections that resist treatment with commonly used drugs, and the lack of new antibiotics to replace ones that no longer work. The method, which extracts drugs from bacteria that live in dirt, has yielded a powerful new antibiotic.
It is a major breakthrough that could lead to the field’s first major new drug in more than a quarter-century. The experimental drug, which was isolated from a sample of New England dirt, is called teixobactin. It has yet to be tested in people.
ABC’s Scott Goldberg joined us from New York to discuss:
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