(Press-News.org) Contact: Michael Bernstein
m_bernstein@acs.org
714-765-2012 (Meeting, March 27-31)
202-872-6042 (Before March 27)
Michael Woods
m_woods@acs.org
714-765-2012 (Meeting, March 27-31)
202-872-6293 (Before March 27)
American Chemical Society
Antibiotics wrapped in nanofibers turn resistant disease-producing bacteria into ghosts
ANAHEIM, March 29 , 2011 — Encapsulating antibiotics inside nanofibers, like a mummy inside a sarcophagus, gives them the amazing ability to destroy drug-resistant bacteria so completely that scientists described the remains as mere "ghosts," according to a report today at the the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
Mohamed H. El-Newehy, Ph.D., leader of the nanofibers research team, said the new technology has potentially important applications in the on-going battle against antibiotic-resistant infections. Estimates suggest that more than 100,000 people in the United States alone develop such infections each year, with nearly 20,000 deaths. Health care costs from those infections may exceed $20 billion annually.
"The rapid emergence of bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics has become a serious public health problem," said El-Newehy. "There is an urgent need to identify new antibiotics that work in different ways that can overcome resistance. Our approach is not a new antibiotic, but a new way of delivering existing antibiotics."
That approach, El-Newehy explained, could make new treatments available to patients much faster than trying to discover and develop brand-new medicines, a process that typically takes 10-12 years and costs $800 million to almost $2 billion. It could be used against a broad range of bacteria to fight disease, prevent bacterial and fungal contamination in the food industry, inhibit the growth of microorganisms in drinking water and enhance the effects of chemotherapy, he added.
It involves putting common antibiotics inside nanofibers made of polyvinyl alcohol and polyethylene oxide — wisps of plastic-like material so small that peach hair or a strand of spider silk are gigantic by comparison. Nanofibers can't even be seen under a regular microscope, and almost a billion could be lined up side-by-side along the length of a yard stick.
El-Newehy's group knew that nanofibers have special properties due to their high surface area to weight ratio. Those properties have kindled research on multiple biomedical applications nanofibers, including wound dressings, medical textiles, antibacterial materials to control post-operative inflammation, and new ways of delivering drugs. They decided to test the effects of nanofibers with multiple antibiotics encapsulated directly into fiber, using laboratory cultures of various microbes. Antibiotics wrapped inside nanofibers were highly effective in killing a variety of disease causing bacteria and fungi, including Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, two increasingly drug-resistant microbes.
"When treated with antibiotics wrapped in nanofibers, the microbes were severely damaged and many cells were enlarged, elongated, fragmented, or left as just empty ghosts," El-Newehy said. "The fibers by themselves, without antibiotic did not affect the bacteria. They seem to work by boosting the power of the antibiotics. By wrapping the anti-microbial agents in the fibers, it makes the drug action more focused and the agents are effective for longer period of time than with conventional delivery techniques."
El-Newehy, with the Petrochemical Research Chair, Department of Chemistry College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, said that besides drug delivery, nanofibers are being used for tissue engineering, wound dressing, medical textiles and antimicrobial materials that can be used to control post-operative inflammation, promote wound healing and dressing, especially for diabetic ulcers.
Salem Al-Deyab, Ph.D., the supervisor of Petrochemical Research Chair at King Saud University, said that this study was funded by the Petrochemical Research Chair at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia. In addition, Petrochemical Research Chair has the lead in the possession of the first machine (Nanospider) for producing nanofibers in Saudi Arabia, said Al-Deyab. Officials plan a major effort to develop the Nanofibers Research Center at Petrochemical Research Chair to become a major center for Nanofibers Research for different applications at King Saud University, said Al-Deyab.
INFORMATION:
The American Chemical Society is a non-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
Antibiotics wrapped in nanofibers turn resistant disease-producing bacteria into ghosts
2011-03-30
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
America's most distressed areas threatened by emerging infections of poverty
2011-03-30
Neglected infections of poverty are the latest threat plaguing the poorest people living in the Gulf Coast states and in Washington, D.C., according to Dr. Peter Hotez, Distinguished Research Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine at The George Washington University and President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, in an editorial published in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases on March 29th.
Hotez explains that current post-hurricane conditions in the Gulf coast states coupled with the BP oil disaster ...
Parasite-induced genetically driven autoimmune chagas disease
2011-03-30
Researchers have shown that the Trypanosoma cruzi agent of Chagas Disease (CD) invades host embryo cells and spreads its mitochondrial DNA (kDNA) minicircles into the host's genome. Dr. Antonio Teixeira and associates at the University of Brasília, Brazil, inoculated virulent typanosomes in fertile chicken eggs and documented the heritability and fixation of the kDNA mutations in the chicks and their progeny. The results, published in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases on March 29th, show that kDNA-mutated chickens undergo genotype alterations, developing ...
Prevention of mother-child transmission programs work but infants need checking for drug resistance
2011-03-30
Genetic mutations that lead to antiretroviral (the drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS) resistance in HIV-infected infants may develop as a result of exposure to low doses of maternal antiretroviral drugs via breastfeeding rather than being acquired directly from the mother. This key finding from a study by Clement Zeh from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kisumu, Kenya, and colleagues, published in this week's PLoS Medicine, is important as it may impact the choice of drug regimen given to HIV-infected breastfeeding mothers and their infected infants—an effective ...
Next steps to making open access a global reality
2011-03-30
Two articles in this week's PLoS Medicine discuss the issues that need to be resolved to ensure that open access can provide for global information needs, and not just those of the developed world.
Leslie Chan, Barbara Kirsop, and Subbiah Arunachalam from the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development argue that access and distribution of public knowledge is currently governed by Northern standards, a situation that is increasingly inappropriate in what they call the "age of the networked Invisible College." Taking as a starting point that open access is sustainable ...
Scientists devise targeted therapy strategy for rare form of childhood cancer
2011-03-30
BOSTON--By "distracting" cancer proteins from their usual activity, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital have caused cells in a rare, lethal form of cancer to begin behaving like normal cells -- one of the longest-standing, and most rarely achieved, goals of cancer research. The study's findings are published online by the journal Cancer Research and will appear later in a print issue.
When the approach was tested in a child with an advanced case of the malignancy, known as NUT midline carcinoma (NMC), it slowed the course of the ...
Elderly heart failure patients who need skilled nursing care often sicker, have poorer outcomes
2011-03-30
Elderly patients with heart failure who need skilled nursing care after hospital discharge are often sicker, at higher risk for poor outcomes and are more likely than other patients to die or be rehospitalized within one year, according to research reported in Circulation: Heart Failure, an American Heart Association journal.
"Patients hospitalized with heart failure are high risk to start with," said Larry A. Allen, M.D., M.H.S., lead author of the study and assistant professor of cardiology at the University of Colorado-Denver School of Medicine in Aurora. "If they ...
Moderate sleep and less stress may help with weight loss
2011-03-30
(PORTLAND, Ore.) March 29, 2011— If you want to increase your chances of losing weight, reduce your stress level and get adequate sleep. A new Kaiser Permanente study found that people trying to lose at least 10 pounds were more likely to reach that goal if they had lower stress levels and slept more than six hours but not more than eight hours a night.
The paper, published today in the International Journal of Obesity, was the result of a study funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Nearly 500 participants ...
Major report shows obese patients have double the risk of airway problems during an anesthetic
2011-03-30
A major UK study on complications of anaesthesia has shown that obese patients are twice as likely to develop serious airway problems during a general anaesthetic than non-obese patients. 'The airway' means the air passages from the outside world to the lungs, which must be kept open to keep the patient alive. The study also shows that the use of a simple breathing monitor, called a capnograph, could significantly reduce deaths and brain damage from such problems in intensive care units (ICUs); it found that absence of a capnograph contributed to 74% of deaths from these ...
Diabetes veterans may show ways to prevent complications
2011-03-30
BOSTON – March 29, 2011 – Over time, diabetes can wreak havoc on the body's eyes, cardiovascular system, kidneys and nerves. A major study by Joslin Diabetes Center researchers, however, has found that some people who have survived diabetes for many decades exhibit remarkably few complications—a discovery that points toward the presence of protective factors that guard against the disease's effects.
The scientists studied 351 participants in the Joslin 50-Year Medalist study, which examines people who have lived with type 1 diabetes for 50 years or more. Among this population, ...
UAB research targets way to stop brain tumor cell invasion
2011-03-30
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., - Gliomas are brain invaders. A kind of malignant tumor cell, gliomas branch out like tendrils from a central tumor source, spreading cancer throughout the brain. Traditional therapies, such as cutting out the tumor surgically, can be ineffective if the cells have already spread. Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham may have come upon a way to stop a glioma invasion in its tracks, using a drug already approved for use in Europe.
Much like early explorers of the Old West followed rivers and streams, depending on them to provide drinking ...