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Ever since the introduction of the penicillin more than 60 years ago bacteria have been fighting back, they are able to evolve resistance to specific antibiotics by producing enzymes which prevent the drugs from working. Over the years, pharmaceutical companies have endeavoured to keep pace with the rate of evolution of resistance through chemical modifications to the structure of penicillin and development of new antibiotics. However, the pharmaceutical companies are clearly losing the battle, because within a few years of the introduction of a new or modified antibiotic, bacteria evolve resistance.
The development of new antibacterial drugs is extremely important, as an example, MRSA can now only be treated with vancomycin (the antibiotic of last resort), however vancomycin resistance is emerging in infective bacteria. Vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE) are well established and vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA) have been found recently in clinical isolates in hospitals. Few new antibiotics have been discovered and are suitable to be brought forward for clinical trials. In the foreseeable future it will become impossible to treat bacterial infections or to carry out invasive procedures, unless effective new treatments become available. This would mean surgery and other branches of medicine regressing back to that point in time before the introduction of penicillin. Therefore, the discovery of the Bacterial Transforming Agent technology by Pharmaceutica is very timely.
There is substantial market potential for Pharmaceutica’s Bacterial Transforming Agent technology, currently the worldwide market for antibiotics used in human medicine is GBP 14 billion and the market for the use of antibiotics in veterinary medicine is of a similar size. Staphylococcus aureus is responsible for 90% of hospital acquired infections and 45% of these are MRSA type. The World Health Organisation estimates that the additional cost of treating virulent antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, such as those caused by MRSA, to be GBP 5 billion worldwide and this is increasing. There is also the significant human cost of increased mortality from 4% for antibiotic-susceptible infections to 10% for antibiotic resistant infections.
The use of different Bacterial Transforming Agent/antibiotic combinations in human and veterinary medicine could help significantly in the prevention of antibiotic resistance spread from animal pathogens to human pathogens. Many similar antibiotics are used in both human medicine and veterinary medicine, e.g. avoparcin, which is structurally similar to vancomycin, a practice which has encouraged pathogenic bacteria that infect both animals and humans such as Enterococci, to develop resistance to important antibiotics such as vancomycin in animals and transfer this resistance to bacteria in humans (VRE). Other antibiotics which are important in human medicine such as cloxacillin and flucloxacillin (penicillin derivatives) are routinely used in veterinary treatments.
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