Notably, that's one reason there so little investment in antibiotic r&d. The concern is that sales of a new antibiotic could be very limited because of this very concern.

This only means that this research should be done by state funded universities and not left to commercial industries.

> This only means that this research should be done by state funded universities and not left to commercial industries.

As anybody who has worked in academia for long enough can tell you, state-funded universities are very much a "commercial industry" and are in no way exempt from market forces. There are a few extra layers of indirection, which slow them down, but the end result is the same.

That pretty much sums up all large technological shifts. They almost to a T seems to happen when there is a military need for them.

This still requires for some company to produce the drug and get it approved by the FDA.

I haven't considered that but its indeed a valid point.

Most importantly, don't feed it to livestock.

From the article: "Crucially, the scientists believe that bacteria will not become resistant to Teixobactin for at least 30 years because of its multiple methods of attack."

Can anyone tell me what would happen if we instead _only_ used this new antibiotic, or at least used it instead of others as often as possible? If it is indeed so potent that bacteria would have difficulty developing a resistance, could we essentially use that window to let resistances to all the other antibiotics die out?

I doubt that 30 year window. If if were nearly impossible to build a resistance, the bacterium producing the antibiotic would poison itself.

And I am not sure how you'd convince people in underdeveloped countries to use the new and expensive drug only.

The bacteria has had far more than 30 years to develop resistance, and it could do it in stages. We don't know how many other bacteria over the gigayears managed to poison itself.

True, but for one, the antibiotic will be produced and used in really large doses once it enters the market, meaning there are trillions of bacterial cells encountering it, which raises the likelihood of development of resistance. And second, horizontal gene transfer between bacteria means different strains of bacteria can cooperate in defeating it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer)

I feel like reading about cryptanalaysis and entropy.

I'm not sure the resistance to other antibiotics would die out.

Resistances do die out; they typically aren't free to acquire. However, I suppose it's likely that a mere 30 years isn't enough to extinguish all traces, especially since it's impossible to really mandate a world-wide ban on certain antibiotics. So even if resistance is reduced, it's possible it'll to come back quickly.

Unless there's some unforeseen toxicity, I don't think they should make it a last resort drug. Just use when necessary.

We already have some very effective, semi-toxic antibiotics like colistin and other peptide-based antibiotics that we use as last resorts.

"use when necessary" is really hard to achieve I think. Will be easier to make a policy to keep the medicine use under control rather than change people's mentality over over-prescribing (includes both doctors and patients - all are guilty)

Not necessary. According to the paper

    "Teixobactin inhibits cell wall synthesis "

Its no more possible that a cell could become resistant, than you or I could become resistant to having our head blown off.

Does it also inhibit cell wall synthesis of non-bacteria cells? If yes, it's toxic to us. If no, bacteria cell walls could evolve to be more like non-bacteria cell walls in order to avoid this. Two links from the Wikipedia article on Teixobactin about this: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41850/... http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30657486 (Actually, Teixobactin only works on gram-positive bacteria, not on gram-negative ones which have an extra membrane.)

Only bacteria, plants, fungi, etc. have cell walls. Animals don't have them.

All cells do have a cell membrane, but that's a totally different structure.

Thanks for the correction.

The real mechanism of resistance is in how it inhibits cell wall synthesis. Plus there are general mechanisms such as drug efflux and prevention of drug entry into the cell.

See, it must be specific enough to not kill our cells, otherwise it is worthless.