Word: linezolid
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...have begun to comb through the vast chemical libraries assembled over the past decade in search of new antimicrobial agents. The effort is starting to pay off. Since September 1999, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved two new antibiotics that target both the enterococci and staphylococci. One--linezolid--seems particularly promising; it represents the first new class of antibiotics to come on the market in 35 years...
Nature is not the only lode that drug developers are mining. Linezolid, the novel antibiotic just approved by the FDA, is totally synthetic, and that is a great advantage, believes Pharmacia Corp.'s Dr. Gary Tarpley, who led the team effort that produced the drug. "Because this compound has never been seen by bacteria," he says, "it is extremely unlikely that there is any pre-existing resistance out there." Like tetracycline, linezolid blocks protein synthesis, but it does so much earlier in the cellular cycle. No other antibiotic operates in this fashion, yet another reason to expect resistance to develop...
Both daptomycin and linezolid (branded under the trade names Cidecin and Zyvox) are aimed at drug-resistant enterococci and staphylococci, which have ballooned into a huge problem for nursing homes and hospitals. But while that is the most attractive commercial market, a number of American pharmaceutical companies are also participating in private-public partnerships aimed at resolving the global health crisis created by drug-resistant malaria and TB. At present, neither disease is a tremendous problem in the U.S. or Western Europe, but that happy situation may not last forever, especially where TB is concerned. In 1992, at the height...
...bacillus has managed to develop resistance to the cocktail of drugs physicians have long used to treat it, including that old standby streptomycin. New drugs, with different mechanisms of action, would be a great help, particularly if they shortened the present six months' time required for treatment. The linezolid family, for example, appears to hold some promise, as does a compound the Seattle-based PathoGenesis Corp. is investigating...
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