A government proposal to slap anti-dumping duties on Chinese and Mexican imports of two key pharma ingredients will push up the prices of common antibiotics like Mox, Augmentin and Sporidex by almost 50%, say their makers.
The commerce ministry has suggested anti-dumping measures on Penicillin-G and 6-APA as provisional duty till it is okayed by the finance ministry. Companies can share their views to the government within 40 days on the imposition before a final duty is determined. However, the drug makers feel that the provisional duty itself would have done the damage, since it will take a few months for the government to arrive at a final decision. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 22nd, 2010
Boston University researchers have found that taking low levels of antibiotics that don’t quite destroy bacteria can turn them into superbugs. While treating bacteria with insufficient levels of antibiotics produces germs that are cross-resistant to a wide range of antibiotics and when the level of antibiotic is less than lethal, the same reaction causes DNA mutations that are not only survivable, but actually protect the bacteria from numerous antibiotics.
Strains of E. coli and Staphylococcus were used by the researchers to test the effect of low level antibiotics and the scientists observed the effect of five different antibiotics on the bacteria, finding that doses that were less than lethal to the germs made them resistant to other antibiotics.
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Posted: February 20th, 2010
A new class of antibiotics which target vital proteins in life-threatening bacteria could be the latest weapon in the fight against hospital superbugs.
Scientists in Switzerland have hailed the discovery as a breakthrough in the battle against multi-drug resistant bacteria, adding that the development of a new class of antibiotics is an event “that probably happens about every 20 years.”
The antibiotics, developed by Swiss biotech firm Polyphor and the University of Zurich, work by targeting key proteins in “gram negative” bacteria which are used in the creation of the outer cell membrane. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 19th, 2010
Cattle producers are trying to educate Congress about the use of antibiotics in the beef industry.
Michael Apley, a Kansas State University veterinary clinical pharmacologist, recently went to Washington, D.C., with National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) representatives to address the issue.
They met with Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., and Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, to discuss H.R. 1549, Slaughter’s bill to ban the use of antibiotics in livestock. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 18th, 2010
Just a few months after winning the 2009 Nobel Prize for chemistry, Yale University’s Thomas Steitz isn’t resting on his laurels.
Yale and the New Haven company Steitz founded, Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, on Tuesday announced a discovery they say could lead to better treatment of stubborn tuberculosis cases and other drug-resistant infections.
Steitz and his colleagues, in a paper published this week in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, described how two components of antibiotics used to treat TB bind to the parts of the cell that form proteins. The idea is to use these structures to make new, advanced antibiotics. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 17th, 2010