Scientists Discover New Class of Antibiotics that Work Against MDR Bacteria
Led by researchers at the University of Liverpool, a team of international scientists have discovered a new, potent class of antibiotics that will help in the fight against antimicrobial resistance.
Scientists from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, working with international collaborators, have discovered a groundbreaking new class of antibiotics that is potent and fast-acting against multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria (1). This discovery marks an important advancement in the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR) — highlighted as one of the top global public health and development threats by the World Health Organization (WHO) (2).
Led by Dr. Ishwar Singh, Reader in Antimicrobial Drug Discovery at the University of Liverpool, the team of scientists involved in this discovery built upon previous pioneering research — simplifying natural products to enhance safety, efficacy, and accessibility — to create the modular synthetic antibiotic platform, Novltex. The team synthesized a number of hybrid antibiotics, combining aspects of teixobactin and clovibactin, which allowed them to combine potent activity with scalable synthesis and a good safety profile (3).
One of the Novltex analogs developed by the scientists, analog 12, was found to not only offer potent antibacterial activity against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Enterococcus faecium, but also exhibited low minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). Given these results, the scientists confirmed that analog 12 provided potent antibacterial activity against MDR bacteria compared with standard clinical treatments while also demonstrating a favorable safety profile (3).
The novel antibiotic platform works by targeting and binding to lipid II, which is an essential bacterial cell wall precursor that exists in low copy numbers and is continuously recycled. Through binding to this target, antibiotics, such as Novltex, disrupt the peptidoglycan synthesis and kill bacteria, including drug-resistant strains such as MRSA. Additionally, as humans do not produce lipid II, targeting this structure is associated with a low risk of unwanted toxicity (4).
“Novltex is a breakthrough in our fight against antimicrobial resistance,” said Singh in a University of Liverpool press release about the discovery (1). “By creating a modular, scalable platform that targets an immutable bacterial structure, we have taken an important step towards antibiotics that remain effective against superbugs like MRSA. This work was only possible through international collaboration, because antimicrobial resistance is a truly global problem. While much more testing is required before Novltex reaches patients, our results show that durable and practical solutions to AMR are within reach.”
References
University of Liverpool. Liverpool Scientists Lead Discovery of Powerful New Antibiotic Class to Tackle Deadly Superbugs. Press Release, Sept. 18, 2025.
WHO. Antimicrobial Resistance. Fact Sheet, Nov. 21, 2023.
Malkawi, E.; Parmar, A.; Das, S.; et al. Novltex: A New Class of Antibiotics with Potent Activity Against Multidrug-Resistant Bacterial Pathogens — Design, Synthesis, and Biological Evaluation. J. Med. Chem. 2025, Published Online First, Sept. 16, 2025.
Medeiros-Silva, J.; Jekhmane, S.; Breukink, E.; Weingarth, M. Towards the Native Binding Modes of Antibiotics that Target Lipid II. ChemBioChem, 2019, 20 (14), 1731–1738.