A team of researchers has discovered a promising new class of antibiotics that could aid efforts to overcome drug-resistance in tuberculosis (TB). Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital found that the drugs increased survival of mice infected with TB and were effective against drug-resistant strains of TB. The antibiotics called spectinamides were created by changing the chemical structure of an existing antibiotic spectinomycin which does not work against TB. In multiple trials of mice with both active and chronic TB infections researchers report that one version of the new drug—an analog known as 1599—was as good as or better
