Scientists at the University of Liverpool, together with international collaborators, have discovered a powerful new class of antibiotics that could help in the global fight against superbugs—bacteria that no longer respond to existing medicines.
The new antibiotic class, called Novltex, has shown strong activity against some of the most dangerous drug-resistant bacteria, including MRSA and Enterococcus faecium.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has called antimicrobial resistance (AMR) one of the top 10 global health threats, responsible for nearly 5 million deaths each year.
Superbugs evolve quickly, leaving many antibiotics useless and doctors with fewer options to treat infections.
Finding new drugs that bacteria cannot easily resist has become one of the most urgent challenges in medicine.
The discovery was led by Dr. Ishwar Singh, Reader in Antimicrobial Drug Discovery at the University of Liverpool.
His team has been working for years on synthetic antibiotics inspired by teixobactin, a natural compound discovered in soil bacteria that can kill other microbes.
By creating and testing a large collection of synthetic molecules, the researchers were able to improve their effectiveness, safety, and cost of production.
This work has now led to the development of Novltex.
Novltex works differently from many traditional antibiotics. It targets lipid II, an essential building block in bacterial cell walls.
Lipid II does not mutate, making it an ideal target. Because bacteria cannot easily change this structure, Novltex may offer long-lasting protection against resistance—something very rare in modern antibiotics.
In laboratory tests, Novltex killed high-priority pathogens identified by WHO and outperformed several widely used antibiotics, including vancomycin, daptomycin, and linezolid.
It worked at very low doses, acted quickly, and showed no toxicity in human cell models.
The researchers also found that Novltex can be produced much more efficiently than natural products, making it cheaper and more practical to manufacture.
Dr. Singh said the results mark an important breakthrough. “Novltex is a significant step forward in our fight against antimicrobial resistance,” he explained.
“By targeting an immutable structure in bacteria and creating a scalable platform, we may finally have a durable solution against superbugs like MRSA. This achievement was possible only through international collaboration, because AMR is a global problem.”
Although the results are promising, Novltex is still in the early stages of development. The next step will be testing in animal models to confirm both safety and effectiveness. Researchers will also study how the drug behaves inside the body and work with industry partners to prepare for clinical trials.
If these efforts succeed, Novltex could become one of the most important new antibiotics in decades, giving doctors a vital tool against infections that currently kill millions worldwide.
Source: University of Liverpool.
