Opioids and Panicillium

Penicillium Fungus Hosts Surprising Opioid Compounds  Next-generation opioids may spring from a tiny fungus protein

By Stephani Sutherland

Lefamulin (Xenleta)

Lefamulin (Xenleta) for Community-Acquired Bacterial Pneumonia

Editor's Note: Lefamulin—A New Antibiotic for Community-Acquired Pneumonia; Preeti N. Malani, MD, MSJ

Arobust antibiotic pipeline is essential for patient care and public health. Yet compared with other classes of drugs, the development of antibiotics presents unique scientific, regulatory, and economic challenges. Most notably, antibiotics provide less financial reward for pharmaceutical companies because these medications are used for a short duration and newer agents are often restricted for use only in the setting of antimicrobial resistance. In fact, most large pharmaceutical companies have reduced or stopped antibiotic research altogether, leaving the critical task of discovering new antibiotics to small companies with limited budgets and research capacity. For these and other reasons, the development and approval of a new antibiotic is a rare occurrence and a reason to celebrate./.../

Prontosil Rubrum

Outros nomes p-sulfamidocrisoidina 4-((2,4-diaminofenil) azo)benzenosulfonamida Identificadores Número CAS 103-12-8, 33445-35-1 (cloridrato) PubChem 66895 Propriedades Fórmula molecular C12H13N5O2S C12H13N5O2S•HCl (cloridrato) Ponto de fusão 248-250 °C (cloridrato) [1] Solubilidade em água Cloridrato: 1 g em 400 mL de água (aumenta significantemente em temperaturas elevadas). Solúvel também em etanol, acetona, gorduras e óleos.[1]

1895: German bacteriologist and pathologist Gerhard Domagk, recipient of the 1939 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery (announced in 1932) of the antibacterial effects of Prontosil, was born. Prontosil, also called sulfamidochrysoidine, trade name of the first synthetic drug used in the treatment of general bacterial infections in humans. Prontosil was introduced into medicine in the 1930s. Prontosil resulted from research, directed by German chemist and pathologist Gerhard Domagk, on the antibacterial action of azo dyes. A red azo dye of low toxicity, Prontosil was shown by Domagk to prevent mortality in mice infected with Streptococcus bacteria. The dye was also effective in controlling Staphylococcus infections in rabbits. Within a relatively short period, it was demonstrated that Prontosil was effective not only in combating experimental infections in animals but also against streptococcal diseases in humans, including meningitis and puerperal sepsis. Later it was found that Prontosil is disrupted in the tissues to form para-aminobenzenesulfonamide (sulfanilamide). Prontosil has been replaced in clinical use by newer sulfonamide drugs, including sulfanilamide, sulfathiazole, sulfamethoxazole, and others. LEARN MORE in these related Britannica articles: history of medicine: Sulfonamide drugs … announced that the red dye Prontosil is active against streptococcal infections in mice and humans. Soon afterward French workers showed that its active antibacterial agent is sulfanilamide. In 1936 English physician Leonard Colebrook and colleagues provided overwhelming evidence of the efficacy of both Prontosil and sulfanilamide in streptococcal septicemia (bloodstream… pharmaceutical industry: Early efforts in the development of anti-infective drugs …of the dyes, known as Prontosil, was later found to be metabolized in the patient to sulfanilamide, which was the active antibacterial molecule. In 1933 Prontosil was given to the first patient, an infant with a systemic staphylococcal infection. The infant underwent a dramatic cure. In subsequent years many derivatives… chemotherapy The discovery of Prontosil in the early 1930s proved that antibacterial agents could be developed. Prontosil was the forerunner of the sulfonamide drugs, which came to be widely used for the treatment of bacterial infections in humans and domestic animals.…

cefiderocol

Cefiderocol in Urinary Tract Infections

But boxed warning needed, along with more data on uses for other hard-to-treat infections

• by Molly Walker, Associate Editor, MedPage TodayOctober 16, 2019

SILVER SPRING, Md. -- An FDA advisory panel voted 14-2 to recommend approval for cefiderocol, a novel antibiotic for complicated urinary tract infections (cUTI), including pyelonephritis, in patients with limited or no other treatment options.

While members of the FDA's Antimicrobial Drugs Advisory Committee were mostly impressed by the data submitted for the drug, they raised concern about a mortality imbalance disfavoring cefiderocol in the CREDIBLE-CR study, which compared the drug to best available therapy in patients with a variety of carbapenem-resistant infections.

Penicillin Allergy

Major Societies Agree – A New Approach to Penicillin Allergy Is Needed

If someone reports history of penicillin allergy, these very useful medications will not be given. Three major societies have come together to agree on an approach for assessing if penicillin allergy is really present when a patient reports an allergy to these medications. Erica S. Shenoy, MD, PhD, from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, author of a JAMA review on the topic, discusses this very important problem.

35 min 35 sec / 0.5 CME   Listen Now ►

Antibiotics

Recomendado pelo AMICOR Moacir Saffer How a long-forgotten virus could help us solve the antibiotics crisis 11:13 minutes · TED@BCG Toronto Viruses have a bad reputation -- but some of them could one day save your life, says biotech entrepreneur Alexander Belcredi. In this fascinating talk, he introduces us to phages, naturally-occurring viruses that hunt and kill harmful bacteria with deadly precision, and shows how these once-forgotten organisms could provide new hope against the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. Watch now »

Antibiotic resistance

The science world is freaking out over this 25-year-old's answer to antibiotic resistance

Could this be the end of superbugs?

FIONA MACDONALD

26 SEP 2016

A 25-year-old student has just come up with a way to fight drug-resistant superbugs without antibiotics.

The new approach has so far only been tested in the lab and on mice, but it could offer a potential solution to antibiotic resistance, which is now getting so bad that the United Nations recently declared it a "fundamental threat" to global health./.../

antibiotics and obesity

Could antibiotics be causing the obesity epidemic?

By Laura Shin | August 27, 2012, 3:00 AM PDT

Yikes. The very medicines we turn to for a cure may be causing us harm.

Two new studies show that antibiotics could be harming the bacteria in our guts, causing us to pack on the pounds. And the hypothesis isn’t so far-fetched, considering that the cattle and pigs we raise as meat are fed a steady stream of antibiotics that have been shown to help them gain weight.

In the first study, which was conducted in mice, exposure to antibiotics disrupted the mice’s internal microbe communities, resulting in changes in the way the mice’s bodies could process food and regulate metabolism./.../

Penicillin bug genome unravelled

Penicillium chrysogenum is used in the commercial production of antibiotics Dutch researchers have decoded the DNA sequence of the fungus which produces penicillin. It is hoped that uncovering the genome of Penicillium chrysogenum will boost the development of new antibiotics to overcome problems of resistance. The findings come just in time for the 80th anniversary of the discovery of penicillin by Sir Alexander Fleming. Full details of the 13,500-gene sequence will be published in Nature Biotechnology in October./.../