Battling a bacterial threat
In 2002, a new kind of bacterial infection was detected in the United States. It was caused by a common bug, Staphylococcus aureus, but with a troubling new twist. It was resistant to the drug that typically offered the last line of treatment, when other remedies failed. The appearance of vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, dubbed VRSA, sent shock waves through the medical and public health communities. For years, vancomycin was the physicians’ ace in the hole, used to treat infections that didn’t respond to other drugs, in particular methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA. In 2009, Harvard scientists teamed up to tackle the challenge posed by growing antibiotic resistance, creating a program bringing together researchers to examine the problem of antibiotic resistance, with a specific focus on VRSA, MRSA, and vancomycin-resistant enterococcus, or VRE. Michael Gilmore, who organized the Harvard-wide Program on Antibiotic Resistance and whose lab in May announced it had decoded the...