Franz Lab Targets Local Delivery (of active drugs, that is!)

Bacteria resistant to β-lactams, our largest class of antibiotics, pose a serious health threat. Our current catalog of antibiotics and their overuse has helped to select for bacteria possessing resistance enzymes, β-lactamases, capable of degrading all β-lactams antibiotics, greatly weakening our current arsenal and thwarting further antibiotic development efforts. Expression of these β-lactamases is typically a strength of resistant, pathogenic bacteria; the Franz lab designed a molecule to turn β-lactamase expression into a weakness. This molecule, AcephPT, was purposively designed to be recognized by the most clinically threatening β-lactamases, and even shows strong preference for them. For the first time, the Franz lab demonstrates a prodrug can hijack β-lactamases expression to locally deliver active drug and selectively eliminate resistant, pathogenic bacteria while preserving (and promoting) the growth of otherwise normal bacteria in the same culture. Read all about it here!