Ceftobiprole...

Here's a name to keep an eye on: ceftobiprole. This is a new antibiotic that is particularly effective against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Furthermore, the developers believe that bacteria will not develop resistance to ceftobiprole:

The research, to be published in the August 2008 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy and available online now, looked at how well Ceftobiprole worked against bacterial clones that had already developed resistance to other drugs. In every case, Ceftobiprole won. "It just knocked out the cells 100 percent," says the study's lead investigator, Alexander Tomasz, head of the Laboratory of Microbiology at Rockefeller.

Previous research had already shown that -- in general -- Ceftobiprole was highly effective against most clinical isolates of S. aureus. "Instead, we looked more carefully at the highly resistant cells that already occur in such clinical isolates at very low frequency -- maybe in one bacterium in every 1,000," says Tomasz. Ceftobiprole was able to kill these resistant cells.

Never before has an antibiotic been tested this way. "In the history of antibiotic development, an antibiotic arrives on the scene, and sooner or later resistant bacteria emerge," Tomasz says. "We sought to test in advance which would win this particular chess game: the new drug, or the bacteria that now cause human deaths."

If the immunity from drug resistance proves to be true, then ceftobiprole is the Holy Grail of antibiotic developers. Let's hope they're right!

Hmmm... I wonder if Johnson & Johnson stock might be a good buy?

More information here and here.