This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue June 2024
Author: Katharina Richter
Image: Bacteria that live in biofilms are 1000 times harder to treat with antibiotics. | Animate Your Science (https://animateyour.science) CC BY 4.0
Scientists are exploring new strategies to win the war against superbugs.
Over the years, the misuse and overuse of antibiotics have inadvertently fuelled the rise of antibioticresistant bacteria. In 2019, 1.27 million people died from antibiotic-resistant infections globally. Imagine antibiotics as soldiers fighting bacteria on the battlefield. Over time, some bacteria manage to survive the attack, passing on their resistance to their descendants. This process, accelerated by the misuse of antibiotics in medicine, agriculture and livestock, has led to the emergence of superbugs that can resist multiple antibiotics, rendering once-effective treatments useless.
Adding to this challenge is the formation of biofilms. By default, bacteria like to stick together and build walls of slime around them. Within this “slime castle”, bacteria are extremely well protected against any enemy. This makes bacteria in biofilms up to 1000 times stronger in withstanding attacks from antibiotics or the immune system compared with single bacteria. The close neighbourhood of bacteria enables them to “chat” to each other, streamline defences and exchange information on how to become resistant to antibiotics.
Biofilms are involved in 80% of infections in the human body that are extremely difficult to treat, such as surgical site infections, non-healing wounds and implant infections.
The scientific community recognises the urgent need for new approaches to tackle antibiotic resistance and biofilms, particularly as no new classes of antibiotics have been discovered since the 1980s. Researchers are exploring various strategies, some of which hold promising potential:
Bacteriophages
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