NIH funding could provide replacements to traditional antibiotics

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has donated $5 million to fund 24 research projects designed to cultivate therapeutic alternatives to traditional antibiotics.

The need for these alternatives has arisen because it has become more common for diseases to gain resistance to traditional antibiotics.

With the resistance of diseases increasing and the development of new antibiotics coming at a slow pace, it has become imperative that an alternative needs to be developed. These new therapeutic alternatives work against the bacteria that make up diseases in a different way than a more traditional antibiotic. Instead of killing the bacteria directly, an alternative type of medicine would use good bacteria already located in a human microbiome to stop the growth of harmful bacteria. Another substitute would use viruses that only target bacteria. Other ideas include decoy targets to stop pathogens and drugs used to prohibit a pathogen from acclimating itself and growing in the system.

The funding for the 24 research projects developing these new types of antibiotics were given to 18 academic institutions and three industrial organizations. The donations give these projects two years of finance with the opportunity for three additional years if the projects succeed.