There is no balance of nature and never has been, the universe is always looking for new ways to kill and create, which is why pathogens evolve resistance to drugs over time. It is estimated that antimicrobial resistance causes over 1,000,000 deaths each year and is involved in 35,000,000 more, if estimates by the United Nations World Health Organisation are accurate. Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus sp., two gram-positive pathogens highly likely to develop resistance to known treatments, can cause dangerous hospital-acquired and community-acquired infections.

This week, researchers published results of a newly synthesized compound called infuzide that shows activity against antimicrobial resistant strains of S. aureus and Enterococcus in lab and mouse model tests. The authors believe that infuzide kills bacteria in ways that differ from other antimicrobials, which may help keep resistance at bay. Because these are mouse studies, the work is still EXPLORATORY.


Time-kill kinetics of Infuzide and vancomycin against S. aureus ATCC 29213 at various time points and multiple concentrations. Each experiment was performed in triplicate, and the entire experiment was repeated twice. The average values are provided with standard deviations wherever applicable. * Indicates P ≥ 0.5, ** indicates P < 0.05, and *** indicates P < 0.005.

 Infuzide involved a decade of work by researchers looking for ways to create compounds that could act against pathogens in ways similar to known pharmaceutical compounds such as hydrazones, inorganic synthesized compounds that previous studies have shown to demonstrate antibacterial activity, including against resistant strains. The researchers synthesized 17 new compounds that contained hydrazones, and among those infuzide showed activity against gram-positive S. aureus and Enterococcus.

Infuzide specifically attacks bacterial cells

In lab tests, they compared the antimicrobial effects of infuzide against vancomycin, a powerful antibiotic representing the standard of care in treating resistant infections. They found that infuzide more quickly and effectively reduced the size of bacterial colonies than the standard drug. In tests of resistant S. aureus infections on the skin of mice, the compound effectively reduced the bacterial population. The reduction was even higher, the researchers reported, when infuzide was combined with linezolid, a synthetic antibiotic.

 Infuzide did not show significant activity against gram-negative pathogens but the authors believe small changes to infuzide that might expand its antimicrobial activity.

 The researchers synthesized the compounds without the need of solvents, so the low cost and simplicity of the chemical reactions could make it easy to make large quantities to be used in new treatments.