The Next Generation of Antibiotics Could Come from the Dirt

Researchers are scouring the soil looking for bacteria that can be used to create new antibiotics. It’s part of a move away from lab-grown dru

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Since Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the world’s first antibiotic, those wonder drugs have been grown in the laboratory.

Today, Sean Brady, PhD, a microbiologist and associate professor at Rockefeller University in New York City, believes the future of antibiotics may lie in the soil just outside our front doors.

Brady’s discovery, 90 years after Fleming’s revelation in 1928, has arrived as the world is facing an antibiotic crisis.

So-called “superbugs” have evolved resistances to the dozens of highly effective antibiotics.

The result has been infections that are becoming increasingly difficult to treat.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that each year in the United States, at least 2 million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. At least 23,000 of them die every year as a direct result of these infections.

In addition, it’s estimated that the global death toll from antibiotic-resistant infections could reach 10 million a year by 2050.