Commenting on the new research, Bio Nano Consulting CEO, Dr David Sarphie said “BNC was set up specifically to help companies apply nanotechnology tools to address real-world biomedical problems such as antimicrobial resistance. Working with the BNC allows companies access scientists who have expertise in numerous ground-breaking nanotech-related research areas, and this paper in Nature Nanotechnology is a great example of the highest quality research that they are undertaking.”
During the study Dr McKendry, Joseph Ndieyira, Moyu Watari and coworkers used cantilever arrays – tiny levers no wider than a human hair – to examine the process which ordinarily takes place in the body when vancomycin binds itself to the surface of the bacteria. They coated the cantilever array with mucopeptides from bacterial cell walls and found that as the antibiotic attaches itself, it generates a surface stress on the bacteria which can be detected by a tiny bending of the levers. The team suggests that this stress contributes to the disruption of the cell walls and the breakdown of the bacteria.
The interdisciplinary team went on to compare how vancomycin interacts with both non-resistant and resistant strains of bacteria. The ‘superbugs’ are resistant to antibiotics because of a simple mutation which deletes a single hydrogen bond from the structure of their cell walls. This small change makes it approximately 1,000 times harder for the antibiotic to attach itself to the bug, leaving it much less able to disrupt the cells’ structure, and therefore therapeutically ineffective.
“There has been an alarming growth in antibiotic-resistant hospital ‘superbugs’ such as MRSA and vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE),” said Dr McKendry. “This is a major global health problem and is driving the development of new technologies to investigate antibiotics and how they work.
“The cell wall of these bugs is weakened by the antibiotic, ultimately killing the bacteria,” she continued. “Our research on cantilever sensors suggests that the cell wall is disrupted by a combination of local antibiotic-mucopeptide binding and the spatial mechanical connectivity of these events. Investigating both these binding and mechanical influences on the cells’ structure could lead to the development of more powerful and effective antibiotics in future.”
Established in late 2007, BNC provides a seamless concept-to-market route for the bio-nanotechnology sector
. About the paper and authors:
The article ‘Nanomechanical Detection of Antibiotic Mucopeptide Binding in a Model for Superbug Drug Resistance’ by J. W. Ndieyira et al., was published in Nature Nanotechnology, October 12 2008.
About Bio Nano Consulting
The BNC is a specialist research and development consultancy operating in the convergent field of bionanotechnology. A joint venture of Imperial College London and University College London, the BNC is funded through the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) with additional support from the London Development Agency (LDA).
Along with its partner organisation, the National Physical Laboratory, the BNC offers a service to the biomedical and healthcare industries in microsystems and nanotechnology. This encompasses design, 3-D modelling and visualisation, rapid prototyping, and characterisation.
