ABSTRACT
Vancomycin is regarded as the drug of last resort in hospital medicine cabinets, and is reserved for infections resulting from bacteria that are resistant to all other antibiotics, typically Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. When taken orally, vancomycin cannot enter the bloodstream efficiently, and therefore it is nearly always administered by injection. The difference has been compared to penicillin acting as a saboteur of the machinery that builds the cell wall and vancomycin being a protester sitting in the way. Unfortunately, bacteria are beginning to develop a resistance to vancomycin too. The bacteria that are resistant to vancomycin have a mutation in their DNA which means their proteins have a different terminal sequence. The binding is therefore a thousand times weaker, making vancomycin ineffective against these bacteria. Dale Boger and his team at the Scripps Research Institute in California have created a simpler form of the vancomycin molecule.
