Resistance to antibiotics has increased alarmingly in recent years. For example, in France the resistance of pneumococci has risen to 58% due to high rates of antibiotic prescription. Medical experts are sounding the alarm. Pharmacologists are seeking new antibiotically effective substances.
A technique has been developed at the Helmholtz Institute for Biomedical Research at the RWTH Aachen University which allows antibiotic substances to be produced with high purity levels and at low cost.
“Our work is based on sugar molecules, which are the essential components of many antibiotics,” says Professor Lothar Elling of the eight years that have now gone into the work. Under two EU projects, he and his PhD students modified the sugar structures of antibiotics in order to gain as broad a possible a spectrum of efficacy. “Through combination of the modified molecules we are able to obtain multiple variance possibilities, which we are currently testing for their effectiveness.”