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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- After decades of being held in check by a host of antibiotics, bacteria are gaining on us, and a major public health crisis is looming -- unless researchers launch a concerted effort to discover and develop new drugs to combat the pathogens.

Efforts to conquer bacteria must be started immediately to stem the rise in anti-microbial resistance, says Dr. Alice Clark, director of the National Center for Natural Products Research at the University of Mississippi. Clark sits on a panel of experts who advised congressional leaders at a hearing of the Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

"I think the message that we're taking collectively is that this is a serious issue that needs urgent attention to understand the scope of the problem and conduct research and education to address it," Dr. Clark says. "My message, specifically, is that universities have a role in addressing this through basic and applied research aimed at discovering, developing or designing potential new drugs to combat pathogens that have developed resistance to existing drugs."

Researchers developed dozens of antibiotics in the middle of the 20th century, and doctors routinely prescribed the drugs to treat a broad range of illnesses.

"Frankly, as a society we developed a bit of a cavalier attitude about how easy it was to discover antibiotics and treat infectious diseases," Dr. Clark says. "Unfortunately, in the last couple of decades, the organisms have been gaining ground and the level of research has not kept pace, and it is research that keeps the pipeline filled up with new drug candidates."

The growing resistance of staphylococcus bacteria to penicillin illustrates the problem, she says. When penicillin was developed in the late 1930s, the majority of staph bacteria was susceptible to the drug at low levels, but many strains of the organism have developed resistance and are unaffected by the drug.

Each year, the pharmaceutical industry introduces an average of two or three new anti-microbial drugs, some of which may counter resistance problems, but whole new classes of anti-microbial agents are needed to thwart resistance growth. Because new drugs take at least five to 10 years to develop, test and market, researchers must act quickly to avoid major problems in decades to come.

"It's urgent because there is that lag time," Dr. Clark says. "This is a serious problem that affects everyone, and we can't afford to wait."

Edited by Chris Smith
Managing Editor, E-dental.com