Bacteria cells are masters of adaptation and evolution, and by better understanding how they adapt and evolve, researchers hope to develop better drugs to fight microbial resistance, which is increasingly becoming a global public health threat. Researchers from the antimicrobial resistance interdisciplinary research group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) sought to understand the mechanisms bacteria use to adapt against stressors, and they discovered a new stress signaling system that sheds light on a new mechanism of antimicrobial resistance.
The most in-depth study to date of the genetic risk factors for long COVID has identified 73 genes that are highly associated with severe or fatigue-dominant forms of the disease. Many of these genes also are known to be associated with other disorders, including myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and neurodegenerative, autoimmune, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
Since its emergence in late 2019, SARS-CoV-2 has killed nearly 7 million people. But at the same time, many infections, in particular in children and young adults, are asymptomatic with rapid viral clearance from the body. It remains unclear why many individuals are able to successfully clear infection without major complications while others develop severe disease, even without known risk factors for severe COVID-19 outcomes.
Now, a new study involving nearly 30,000 individuals has found that variation in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) loci may underlie processes mediating asymptomatic infection. The findings were reported in the July 19, 2023, online edition of Nature.
Researchers from Assembly Biosciences Inc. reported on the preclinical characterization of ABI-5366, a potent helicase-primase inhibitor against both HSV-1 and HSV-2.
Research at Pharmablock Sciences (Nanjing) Inc. has led to the development of spirooxindole compounds acting as 3C-like proteinase (3CLpro; Mpro; nsp5) (SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19 virus) inhibitors and thus reported to be useful for the treatment of viral infections.
A chance discovery has led to a new class of antibiotics with multiple arms that interacted with the cell wall of gram-positive bacteria, inhibiting their assembly and disarming them. “It was an accidental discovery. We were using it to stain cells. We also were running evaluations of antibiotics. One of my former students came to me and said: ‘I think we have discovered something that is quite potent as an antibiotic,’” the senior author Xingyu Jiang told BioWorld.
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