Yury Polikanov’s research, published in Science, generates media buzz
Research accomplished in the Polikanov Lab at UIC helped their long-time collaborators at Harvard create a new antibiotic, cresomycin, that is effective in mice against several bacterial species that are increasingly difficult to treat in the clinic. Cresomycin was designed using research insights from the structural analysis of ribosomes bound to previous generations of antibiotics of the same class, as published in Science last week and in Nature Chemical Biology last month.
“We have not only provided the structural basis for the superior antibacterial properties of cresomycin,” Polikanov said, “But we have also uncovered how cresomycin overcomes the two most common types of resistance to this type of antibacterial by determining the actual structured of antibiotic interacting with two types of drug-resistant ribosomes."
Given the mounting toll of antimicrobial resistance and the lack of new, effective drugs in the marketplace over the last 50 years, this novel research is creating a buzz of media coverage. Read about it in these articles: