Weiss thinks we are ingenious enough to cope with the problem, however, and one way is to find new classes of antimicrobial agents. He is intrigued by those that would involve such fundamental biologic properties that a pathogen would have to do much more than change an enzyme or block a molecule in order to counter a therapy. He cites the research of Michael Zasloff, MD, PhD, who discovered naturally occurring antibiotic peptides in the skin of a frog in 1987, when he was at the National Institutes of Health. Zasloff continues his research at Magainin Pharmaceuticals, which he founded in 1992. Maybe we can build on that, since these are the routes that many pathogens take to invade the body.
Novel therapies are very expensive to develop.
Until recently modifications in existing antibiotics seemed to handle resistant strains of bugs. But the potential market for a new class of antibiotics is now large enough to give pharmaceutical companies a financial incentive, and they are working on it. A major concern for epidemiologists like Weiss and Donald Louria, MD, who chairs the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at the medical school, is how easily and quickly disease can spread in a world where international travel is commonplace. HIV - Newer data suggests that by giving combination therapy up front you are preventing the initial emergence of resistance. A notice on ProMed, an online service that tracks infectious diseases, warned that the means were at hand for Ebola to be transported from the forest to urban and semi-urban areas, where it would slowly adapt to new environments.