Bacteria are increasingly becoming resistant to antibiotics. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the inappropriate use of penicillin and other antibiotics is responsible for the growing distribution of resistant pathogens. If countermeasures are not implemented very soon, numerous widespread infectious diseases may no longer be treatable, according to Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO.

Andreas Schubert, head of the working group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapies and Immunology (IZI), and his staff have identified 20 short amino acid chains capable of killing many germs such as enterococci, yeasts and moulds, but also human pathogen bacteria such as Streptococcus mutans or lipid-coated viruses. In tests even the growth of the multi-resistant hospital germ Staphylococcus aureus was able to be significantly inhibited. First, the researchers generated sequence variations from peptides with a length of less than 20 amino acids known to have fungicidal and bactericidal effects. Then they tested them in vitro on different germs. The germs were incubated with the synthetic antimicrobial peptides for one hour. Since the newly generated peptides carry positively charged amino acids, they can bind to and penetrate the negatively charged bacteria's membrane, thus inhibiting further bacterial growth.

Further information: http://www.fraunhofer.de/