The emergence and spread of Enterobacteriaceae resistance complicate the treatment of serious nosocomial infections and may threaten to create species resistant to all currently available agents. With the urgency of new therapies driving every breakthrough, the development of antibiotics is constantly changing and developing. Creative Biolabs is committed to providing innovative anti-infective therapies for the treatment of often life-threatening infections caused by Enterobacteriaceae.
Enterobacteriaceae is a large family of Gram-negative non-spore bacilli, which are facultative anaerobes, including many pathogens, such as Escherichia coli (E. coli), Klebsiella, Salmonella, Shigella and Yersinia pestis. They are normal inhabitants of the intestinal flora and one of the most common pathogens in human beings, causing infections ranging from cystitis to pyelonephritis, septicemia, pneumonia, peritonitis, meningitis and device-associated infections.
Among them, E. coli is the common cause of urinary tract infection, Klebsiella and Enterobacter are the important causes of pneumonia and all of the Enterobacteriaceae are related to bloodstream infections, peritonitis, cholangitis, and other intra-abdominal infections. In addition, microbes such as Salmonella can cause gastroenteritis, which can then lead to invasive infections in some patients.
The current worldwide emergence of resistance to carbapenems, the powerful antibiotic in Enterobacteriaceae, constitutes an important growing public health threat. Carbapenem resistance arises from two main mechanisms: (I) acquisition of carbapenemase genes, which encode for enzymes capable of degrading carbapenems, or (II) qualitative or quantitative deficiency of porin due to overexpression of β-lactamase with weak affinity to carbapenem, thus reducing the absorption of antibiotics.
Since the 2000s, the spread of community-acquired E. coli isolates has been reported worldwide, and these bacteria have produced extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs) that can hydrolyze almost all antibiotics except carbapenems. The consequence of this new phenomenon is an increase in the consumption of carbapenems. These antibacterial agents are essential for the treatment of life-threatening nosocomial, or hospital-acquired infections, such as those related to transplantation, hospitalizations in intensive care units, surgery, and the emergence of carbapenem resistance may jeopardize or prevent the development of modern technology.
Fig.1 Primary mechanisms of β-lactam resistance in Enterobacteriaceae. (Nordmann, 2012)
Enterobacteriaceae are easy to spread from person to person through hand carriage and contaminated food and water and tend to obtain genetic material through horizontal gene transfer, which is mainly mediated by plasmids and transposons. This combination is the reason why the emerging multidrug resistance of Enterobacteriaceae is crucial for clinical therapy.
With the extensive research of antimicrobial resistance, Creative Biolabs provides the one-stop service for the discovery & development of drugs based on the in-depth understanding of drug-resistant bacteria.
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