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Blasting bugs without antibiotics


Bug busting: maybe harnessing a bug's own natural survival mechanism is the key to fighting infection (Image: iStockphoto)

Pitting one germ against the other is behind at least two new methods of fighting infection without antibiotics, a U.S. meeting has heard.

One method uses deadly enzymes, made by viruses called bacteriophages, which precisely execute bacteria. Another uses compounds made by one bacteria to shut down another without actually killing it.

Each illustrates potential new ways to fight the growing problem of superbugs, bacteria that have mutated to resist most or all antibiotics used against them.


A single squirt of the bacteria-killing enzyme may keep an infected person from sneezing out bacteria for up to a week, said Dr Vincent Fischetti of Rockefeller University in New York.


They have used them to decontaminate animals of bacteria such as Group A streptococci and staphylococci.


They also tried it intravenously against the anthrax bacillus.

"We could save 90% of the animals with a single dose of the enzyme," said Fischetti, whose work is funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The researchers are planning tests in mice, monkeys and perhaps rabbits and will use the results to seek permission to test the enzyme for safety in humans.


"These enzymes work instantly," Fischetti said, and could be sprayed into the nose in a saline buffer.

And he said there was no evidence, yet, that bacteria can develop mutations that will allow them to evade these enzymes.

Using bugs to blast bugs


They found peptides, short pieces of proteins, regulate this behaviour.




The peptide, called auto-inducing peptide, affects signalling within the bacteria.

Staphylococcus aureus, one of the worst causes of infections caught in hospitals, have evolved into four different strains, each with a different version of this peptide.



Tags: health, biology, biotechnology