For a long time, we knew penicillin prevented growth of certain bacteria on petri dishes, but at first we did not know how to mass produce it. World War II solved that problem.

Our leaders knew from the very beginning of our entry into WWII that we would have to invade Europe, where and when were yet to be decided, but they knew it would be deadly for Allied invaders.

Many deaths would come from wound infections unless penicillin or some other miracle drug could be mass produced, and a few companies, with huge financial help from the government, figured out how to do it.

And then the bugs figured out how to develop resistance. The once thought to be magical bullet became much less effective. Oh sure, there were carbon rings and other things moved around to try and save penicillin’s magic and variations like amoxicillin, augmentin, oxacillin and methicillin came about, but so did resistance.

So the announcement from the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists that they just might have a new compound that can be used with penicillin to make it more powerful is exciting news.

Years ago pharmaceutical companies added clavulanic acid to amoxicillin to create augmentin, a much stronger version of its predecessor.

Now ARS is saying you can add tunicamycin to penicillin and make it 32-64 times more potent, just like adding clavulanic acid to amoxicillin.

Soil dwelling members of the Streptomyces bacterial group secrete tunicamycin to keep rival bacteria from reaching choice resources of food.

Researchers have known for years that tunicamycin caused bacterial cell walls to be destroyed, causing them to die. But they also knew the compound was harmful to humans. Now ARS says they have retooled the compound and that it poses little or no threat to humans based on laboratory trials but still kills germs.

Only time will tell, of course, but at a conference just last week a speaker said that farmers must work to use antibiotics wisely, because there would probably be no new classes of antibiotics developed in their lifetimes. I agreed with him. The last new class of antibiotics was FDA approved way back in 1978.

I always respected and admired the scientists at USDA ARS when I was with USDA, but I really thought the next breakthrough in antibiotics would be from Merck, Lilly or one of the other Big Pharma names.

I guess instead of a third World War being the impetus, the fact that animals raised for food are falling ill from bacteria resistant to penicillin and other medically important antibiotics caused a sense of urgency at USDA.

Way to go ARS.

Penicillin: Will the magic bullet become magical again?

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