Link: Fostering A New Medical Life For A Forgotten Antibiotic.
The increasing need for new antibiotics to combat multidrug-resistant bacteria has led chemists to develop the first method for synthesizing a potentially valuable antibiotic that has been sidelined from clinical use for 40 years. Harvard University’s Daniel E. Kahne and colleagues report the first total synthesis of the antibiotic, moenomycin A, in an article in Journal of the American Chemical Society, a weekly publication.
Kahne points out that moenomycin is a broad-spectrum antibiotic with unusual promise. It has strong antibacterial activity against a large group of bacteria that cause pneumonia, urinary tract infections, gastritis, stomach ulcers, food poisoning and other disorders. Moenomycin also kills bacteria in an unusual way; it binds directly to enzymes that bacteria need to form a cell wall.
