MONTREAL -- A “lucky” discovery made by Quebec's National institute of scientific research (INRS) could be a way to more efficiently fight against the bacteria that cause gonorrhea and meningitis, even in strains that are resistant to antibiotics.

Professors Frédéric Veyrier and Annie Castonguay were attempting to find antimicrobial agents which could be effective against various bacteria, notably Neisseria meningitis (which causes meningitis) and Neisseria gonorrhoeae (which causes gonorrhea), when they discovered this.

“We found several molecules, but we realized (…) this one had good activity which, on top of that, was very specific to the two Neisseria pathogens," Veyrier to the Canadian Press.

Despite the fact that they cause different illnesses, Neisseria meningitis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae are very much alike when compared to other Neisseria, he specified.

The organism can be found in numerous Neisseria bacteria, and not all of them are harmful. Because of this, the discovery of a molecule capable of only attacking the dangerous ones is all the more interesting.

“We will be able to specifically target those bacteria without ever touching other Neisseria that are part of our normal flora,” said Veyrier.

Antibiotic-resistant

Antibiotic resistance is increasingly worrying. The World Health Organization (WHO) warned this summer that it would become “one of the gravest threats weighing on global health, food safety and development.”

The UN health agency added that “a growing number of infections, such as pneumonia tuberculosis or gonorrhea (…) are becoming more difficult to treat as antibiotics used in treatment were losing their efficacy.”

If we still have good vaccines against meningitis, Veyrier said, the situation with gonorrhea becomes more problematic.

“Neisseria gonnorhoeae is starting to be very big problem because it infects a lot of people all over the world and, as such, we have more and more bacteria that become resistant to antibiotics that we use and we start to have strains that resist more or less every antibiotic we try,” he explained.

In Canada, the share of gonorrhea cases that are resistant to multiple antibiotics increased from 4.5 per cent in 2014 to 8 per cent in 2018, according to data from the federal government.

Neisseria are particularly problematic when it comes to antibiotic resistance because we know their genome is easily modified, said Veyrier.

First, he said, they have a “natural aptitude” for catching and integrating DNA from other Neisseria or other bacteria. This allows them to acquire antibiotic resistance.

In addition, “their DNA repair structure is not necessarily hyper-performant for a bacteria, and as such many mutations can accumulate,” said Veyrier.

“In the presence of antibiotics, these mutations could be selected and cause antibiotic resistance."

The mechanism that allows the molecule to attack and destroy Neisseria is not fully understood, which could explain why the molecule attacks them more efficiently than others.

The discovery of this molecule could therefore not only lead to the eventual development of a new therapy, but also allow a better understanding of what differentiates dangerous Neisseria from benign ones.

This study’s conclusions were published in the scientific journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

 This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 24, 2020.