A lipoglycopeptide antibiotic for Gram-positive biofilm-related infections

Drug-resistant Gram-positive bacterial infections remain a critical concern, and new treatment modalities against them are needed in the clinic. Blaskovich et al. optimized a vancomycin-derived antibiotic bearing a membrane-targeting glycopeptide and demonstrated that this compound was effective in multiple mouse models of Gram-positive infections, including difficult-to-treat biofilms. The optimized compound was more potent than its parent, vancomycin, and had a low rate of resistance, suggesting that this candidate compound may warrant further development.