What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

[brewer]

There is a new selective gram-negative antibiotic being tested that could be a game changer, lolamicin. Kills the nasties and leaves the beneficial alone.

---

Infections caused by Gram-negative pathogens are increasingly prevalent and are
typically treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics, resulting in disruption of the gut
microbiome and susceptibility to secondary infections. There is a critical need for
antibiotics that are selective both for Gram-negative bacteria over Gram-positive
bacteria, as well as for pathogenic bacteria over commensal bacteria. Here we report
the design and discovery of lolamicin, a Gram-negative-specific antibiotic targeting
the lipoprotein transport system. Lolamicin has activity against a panel of more than
130 multidrug-resistant clinical isolates, shows efficacy in multiple mouse models of
acute pneumonia and septicaemia infection, and spares the gut microbiome in mice,
preventing secondary infection with Clostridioides difficile. The selective killing of
pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria by lolamicin is a consequence of low sequence
homology for the target in pathogenic bacteria versus commensals; this doubly
selective strategy can be a blueprint for the development of other microbiome-
sparing antibiotics.

---

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-0...dscape.com