Agile Sciences creates a powerful new weapon in the fight against antibiotic resistance
Their proprietary family of 2 Amino-Imadazole compounds renders bacteria incapable of mounting any kind of defense against antibiotics or other threats.
Agile Sciences in Raleigh, NC has developed a potentially powerful, effective and affordable means to stem the tide of antibiotic resistance. Results show that their proprietary family of 2 Amino-Imadazole (2-AI) compounds, act directly on the response regulator protein of so-called bacterial two-component systems. This effectively renders the bacteria incapable of mounting any kind of defense against antibiotics or other threats. “Agile’s 2-AI compounds have been shown to affect all the bacterial resistance mechanisms reducing the amount of antibiotic needed to kill them, eliminating future resistance and reviving antibiotics that have previously been rendered useless due to resistance issues”, said Malcolm Thomas COO of Agile Sciences.
The dramatic increase in antibiotic resistance in recent years has alarmed healthcare experts. A recently released Wellcome Trust report commissioned by the British government estimates that deaths due to antibiotic resistance will rise from the current level of 700,000 to 10 million deaths a year. The CDC last week announced the first case of a US superbug. An E-coli strain resistant to all known antibiotics was detected in 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Dr Christopher Davies, an expert on antibiotic resistance from the Medical University of South Carolina, notes: “The antibiotic cupboard is bare, and it will take years for new ones to reach the market. What the Agile Sciences technology offers is a way to fight antibiotic resistance today. Their compounds make current antibiotics work better, breathe new life into older antibiotics and eradicate pathogenic biofilms.”
Derived from a natural marine organism, Agile’s technology was initially developed by two Professors at North Carolina State University and has extensive funding from NIH, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, North Carolina Biotechnology Center and NIAID.
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