Emerging resistance among both S.aureus and P. aeruginosa has rendered many drugs once considered the gold standard of antimicrobial treatment to be ineffective, resulting in increased disease severity and worse patient outcomes. These resistances necessitate the development of new antimicrobial therapies to keep up with bacterial mutations. Since the pipeline for completely novel antibiotics is lengthy and difficult, our laboratory has turned to combinatorial antibiotic therapy. By combining already FDA approved and commercially available drugs, we discovered that some combinations exhibited highly synergistic effects exceeding the efficacy of both the individual antibiotic and also traditional gold standard fluoroquinolones.
Most notably, the combination of PT (Polymyxin B and Trimethoprim) with Rifampin displayed significant synergy both in in vitro and in vivo murine models. The PT-Rifampin combination proved to be superior to the traditional moxifloxacin. These novel antibiotic agents can be used in common bacterial diseases like bacterial keratitis and our lab is developing proprietary formulas for commercial use of these combinations.
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