Because they no longer respond to medicines, infections are harder to treat and there is an increasing risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.
But a University of Otago-led study has found a highly vulnerable weakness in drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis, offering a new way to kill the disease, which could be transferred to other drug-resistant pathogens.
Study senior author and Otago microbiology and immunology researcher Dr Matthew McNeil said researchers had developed a genetic platform to identify biological pathways in a drug-resistant strain of M. tuberculosis that are highly sensitive to inhibition.
The technology enabled them to find the pathogen’s weak point — essentially, its "Achilles’ heel".
"We were then able to identify drugs that target this weakness and can rapidly kill these drug-resistant strains.
"Whilst our work specifically focuses on Mycobacterium tuberculosis — the leading global cause of infectious disease morbidity, overtaking Covid-19 in 2024 — this technology can be applied to other drug-resistant pathogens," he said.
Dr McNeil described the pathogens as a "major public health problem".
He believed novel developments, such as those in the study, were needed to deal with them.
"New treatment strategies are needed that can not only rapidly kill these pathogens, but prevent them from occurring in the first place.
"Drug-resistant infections are scary, but if we think outside the box when it comes to designing new drugs, there are ways in which we can find actionable solutions to stop this problem."
