Scientists from the Antimicrobial Resistance Interdisciplinary Research Group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, which happens to be MIT’s research enterprise in the country, in partnership with Nanyang Technological University and also National University Hospital, have gone on to discover a novel therapy by way of combining two antibiotics, namely, rifaximin and clarithromycin, so as to treat Mycobacterium abscessus, a kind of non-tuberculous mycobacterium that goes on to cause lung-related infections that are chronic.
Infections that are caused by NTM happen to be a rapidly growing concern across the world, especially in the context of lung-related infections. Across NTMs, M. abscessus happens to be one of the most frequent, causing pulmonary infections in humans with immune deficiencies or lung conditions that are underlying.
With clarithromycin being the main element of NTM treatment and at present the only massively effective oral antibiotic so as to treat M. abscessus infections, there happens to be an urgent medical requirement for the compound identification that are clarithromycin potentiators to restore its efficacy against M. abscessus more effectively.
Because of this, the researchers are now going ahead with their research with animal preclinical studies so as to get ready for human clinical trials. Since both clarithromycin and rifaximin happen to be approved by the USFDA, the preclinical studies that go on to evaluate their mix against M. abscessus can be expedited. It is well to be noted that the team is also partnering with a commercial manufacturing collaborator so as to come up with inhalation formulations that happen to be apt to deliver the drug combinations straight to the lungs for use when it comes to human clinical trials.
