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Clinical Research section

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The text in the Clinical Research section appears to be copied from somewhere (a google search comes up with a bunch of pages with the same text). Can someone add a citation to the claim that pharmaceutical companies do not want to invest in R&D for antibiotics?

Cleanup

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The infobox is badly broken. Currently it is wider than my screen. As the infobox doesn't scroll, anything extending beyond my browser window is unreadable. As it is, it is already overlaying the sidebar (the thing with "Main Page", "Contents", etc) This is not a problem caused by image size. The infobox should be no wider than 50% of the content area. I would say it should be no wider than 500px. -- 65.94.40.137 (talk) 01:39, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Continued here. Working on this. -DePiep (talk) 13:39, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
A final solution takes some time tot test (to be safe for 10,000 articles). For now, I have added spaces into the InChI string. The 525 character long string will now wrap more nicely. -DePiep (talk) 15:24, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

InChI = Standard InChI

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Question: are Standard InChI and InChi the same in this? -DePiep (talk) 15:05, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Except for the opening "1S"/"1/", both InChI strings are exact the same. Need to write them both? (of course, because of that "S" the Keys are different too). -DePiep (talk) 15:11, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Great to be so prompt

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Quick off the mark—excellent work! Tony (talk) 01:59, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Saw a fresh news article, thought it was high time I created my first article. Stephen Lafleur (talk) 06:41, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Discovery

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There seems to be a minor edit war going on regarding who discovered this. NovoBiotic claim it to be their creation in a press release and they own the patent (despite what the current version says I can find no evidence of Teixobactin being patented by Northeastern University then lisenced to NovoBiotic; perhaps that refers to the iChip technology?). The Nature paper list its corresponding authors as being from Northeastern, although several NovoBiotic employees are mentioned in the contributions section. This arraignment, with the company getting the patent and the university getting the paper, strikes me as fairly normal for a industry-academic partnership. In any event its not for us to assign ownership of the discovery, that risks WP:UNDUE and WP:OR, if NovoBiotic claim the discovery to be theirs, and there are no counter-claims, then we must report that the discovery to be theirs (although we can of course mention the input of the other organisations; as was done in my last edit).-- Project Osprey (talk) 12:06, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is editing according to "strikes me as fairly normal for a industry" consistent with WP:POV? Why "industry"? Is this article primarily about a scientific discovery, or industrial progress? It will become industrial when they develop a drug. In which source did NovoBiotic claim to have "made the discovery", or "led the discovery"? Please note the Nature web page for the paper shows that the authors specifically report: "These authors contributed equally to this work. Losee L. Ling & Tanja Schneider." Ting is at NovoBiotic and Schneider is at Bonn. They are the first names in each of the two institutes first named. The first sentence under "Contributions" states "K.L. and T.S. designed the study, analysed results, and wrote the paper." T.S. is from Bonn. Kim Lewis is the "corresponding author", listed as from Northeastern. He is now a paid consultant for NovoBiotic. Layzeeboi (talk) 20:53, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The isolation chip is discussed at length at PMC 2849220, a 2010 paper from Nichols D, Cahoon N, Trakhtenberg EM, Pham L, Mehta A, Belanger A, Kanigan T, Lewis K, Epstein SS. Here too, we see Kim Lewis' name. At that time he was with Northwesteastern. LeadSongDog come howl! 22:08, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The cited "patent" is only an A1 application, pertaining to a "novel depsipeptide", not the isolation chip. WO 03027233  (A2) "ISOLATION AND CULTIVATION OF MICROORGANISMS FROM NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS AND DRUG DISCOVERY BASED THEREON" seems to refer to the device. LeadSongDog come howl! 22:50, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Re: User:Project Osprey — But does their press release really say "we discovered it" or "we led the discovery"? It says only the more ambiguous "[we] announce the discovery", which is consistent with the Nature article and our article as it now reads. (To borrow a phrase from the first contribution to this thread, it "strikes me as fairly normal" that a company would state their claim on their own web page as strongly as they dared without getting roasted over a slow fire by their academic colleagues.) Layzeeboi (talk) 23:03, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Perhaps, although I've just noticed that the press release is authored by Kim Lewis. It seems unlikely that he would write an article claiming fame away from his own institution... although the article also described Kim as being a co-founder of NovoBiotic... This is getting a bit complex. --Project Osprey (talk) 02:12, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree, it's complex. Another way to look at it is that the Nature paper reports a scientific discovery that might one day lead to scientific awards or prizes, which are unlikely to be awarded to the company NovoBiotic. Do we want to find ourselves sheepishly scrambling then to turn our article about a "commercial" discovery back into a scientific discovery? Layzeeboi (talk) 03:22, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Since there still seems to be conflict about where credit is due, I think we should completely remove reference to Novobiotic and Northeastern from the lede. I will do this if there is no disagreement. Mythomane (talk) 18:27, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that may be for the best. --Project Osprey (talk) 18:59, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This interview with Dr. Lewis may help alleviate some of the confusion regarding the discovery of E. terrae and subsequently Teixobactin. Dr. Lewis is both a co-founder and consultant of Novobiotic and a professor at Northeastern University. http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/01/09/2015/sifting-soils-for-new-approaches-to-antibiotics.html

New Article

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This article might be of use to you! It was published on The Telegraph by Sarah Knapton, a science editor, on January 7th, 2015. There might be some information in this article that could be useful for this Wiki page. You can find the article at this website: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11331174/First-new-antibiotic-in-30-years-discovered-in-major-breakthrough.html. Cheers, Comatmebro ~Come at me~ 22:53, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

bacteria "without "a cell wall vs with a thin cell wall...

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I would like to keep the brief term "bacteria with a thin cell wall such as..." because this is an encyclopedia and its important to talk about what T doesnt cover. Mythomane you are correct of course and so I corrected.--Wuerzele (talk) 11:09, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Controversy: "first new antibiotic to be discovered in 25 years"

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In an effort to forestall another edit war, I here paraphrase a discussion that I have been having on my talk page with User:AmaryllisGardener, about this phrase "first new antibiotic to be discovered in 25 years". Although it is sourced (weakly imho), I think these sources are unaware (or pretend to be so for the sake of hype) of the distinction between "antibiotic" and "approved antibiotic drug". At WP:Antibiotic, we read: "Antibiotics or antibacterials are a type of antimicrobial used specifically against bacteria, and are often used in medical treatment of bacterial infections." Although the term "antibiotic" is usually used in a medical context, there it is usually code/slang for "approved antibiotic drug". But it's exact meaning is as above, and as used in this article. Chlorine bleach is an antibiotic, but is not a drug because it is toxic to mammals. There have been new materials discovered or synthesized in the last 25 years that kill bacteria but have not become drugs because they're irrelevant or unsuitable. I suppose that those sources could have correctly said something like "If Teixobactin were developed into an approved drug, it would become the first new antibiotic drug to be discovered in 25 years". But we may not have a source for such a careful statement, which does not appear in what I feel is the most reliable secondary source. On the other hand, we need to heed the WP "Prime Directive" to slavishly echo the sources with due weight, to borrow a phrase from another recent talk-page controversy. If we feel the need to slavishly echo these particular sources, I think we need to also point out that the statement may be ambiguous because it's not clear if the word "antibiotic" was used there in the sense that we use it in this article. Layzeeboi (talk) 18:04, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • The BBC article (which is much better written and researched than many of the news articles parroting sensationalist headlines), as well as the Nature article you mentioned, seem to say that it is the the first new type or class of antibiotic discovered in recent years. This is probably an important distinction that has been missed by the other articles. Note the timeline in the BBC article that shows the last new class of antibiotics discovered were lipopeptides. Mythomane (talk) 20:24, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Just as an example to illustrate this, linezolid is a "new" antibiotic that was discovered in the 90s and approved in 2000, but its class (oxazolidinones) was discovered way back in the 1950s. Mythomane (talk) 21:11, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Sorry, I failed to check the talk page before I reverted. But before we introduce the concept "class of antibiotic" in a punch line, I think we need to define or wikilink to this "classification", perhaps by making an article about this "classification". Punch lines need to embody well-defined concepts. Layzeeboi (talk) 21:17, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Another question to ask ourselves is whether WP has any commitment to attempt to promote the significance of a discovery to the utmost compatible with the sources. Layzeeboi (talk) 21:23, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • A good question. In any case, the statements in the article are quite clearly incorrect, which I don't think we want. There are plenty of approved/discovered "antibiotic drugs" over the last 25 years. Like the claims to who discovered it, I think we should hesitate to include such information in the lede at all.Mythomane (talk) 21:47, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • Where may we find a dated list of antibiotic drugs, containing "plenty"? Layzeeboi (talk) 22:00, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ah, sorry, I missed your wikilink. It will be interesting if someone can figure out how to reconcile that list with the statements made in high-quality sources about a long drought of antibiotic drugs. So I guess we delete the claim until someone figures out how to say it correctly, if at all. Layzeeboi (talk) 22:11, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • I was able to find plenty of stuff that said the same thing, including articles from several newspapers of record. But, I guess I'm not of any use here because I (supposedly like the news sites/papers) don't know much about pharmacology, I'm not going to argue with you, I know I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer anyway. Now I'm just left here with an open DYK that has content that's not in the article, but you're left with a blurb about Teixobactin that's about to go to ITN on the main page saying "Teixobactin is the first antibiotic isolated in 25 years effective against drug-resistant Gram-positive bacteria", so maybe you should talk to the guys at ITN too. --AmaryllisGardener talk 22:30, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        • Notice that in their headline they emphasized it was isolated from bacteria (avoids overlap with synthetic discovery). That makes it a much more specific, reasonable claim! I suggest we change the article (and the DYK) to something along the lines of "first novel antibiotic isolated from bacteria in 25 years" Mythomane (talk) 23:08, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • As you pointed out (and I finally noticed), in the article antibiotic#classes, we read
Following a 40-year hiatus in discovering new classes of antibacterial compounds, four new classes of antibacterial antibiotics have been brought into clinical use:[when?] cyclic lipopeptides (such as daptomycin), glycylcyclines (such as tigecycline), oxazolidinones (such as linezolid), and lipiarmycins (such as fidaxomicin).
The approval dates for the four new classes are 2003, 2005, 2000, and 2011. So anything that can be said about "ending the drought" is going to have to be quite specific somehow. Layzeeboi (talk) 22:40, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, it's difficult because the claim hinges on so many vague terms. What constitutes "discover"? Does synthesizing a new antibiotic count? Whats considered a distinct class? Academic articles use the terms in several ways, so the 25 year claims are not very meaningful. The antibiotic discovery "drought" definitely exists though, referring to an overall slowing of novel antibiotic discovery. Academic articles like this one from 2011 emphasize lack of discovery of novel classes, so it is significant if teixobactin belongs to a novel class. Mythomane (talk) 22:55, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your latest is certainly an improvement on what I deleted, and the new source looks good. But do we really have a source for your statement: "Teixobactin was the first novel antibiotic isolated from bacteria in decades..."? Remember, "antibiotic" means anything at all that kills any bacterial species with any degree of potency, whether it has potential for medicine or not. Wouldn't it require a rather extensive literature search to confirm this? I think that trying to compress this multi-faceted discovery into a neat sentence is difficult. Again, what "problem" are we trying to solve? Layzeeboi (talk) 01:15, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • I like the edit you made. I don't think there's much more we can do with it until we can find quality sources that more clearly explain teixobactin in the context of the history of antibiotic discovery. We don't want to stray into original research, but at the same time we don't want to understate that finding an antibiotic like this isn't exactly a daily occurence. Mythomane (talk) 02:25, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, group, I 'd first like to thank AmaryllisGardener for his or her boldness to do a DYK nomination (I ve never made one either). This topic is a really good one for DYK, as I assume you'll all agree, participating on the page, right? Thank you Layzeeboi for keeping the lead and teh sources clean (I weeded out before you) and Mythomane for finding sources and formulations.
I think the present hook isnt ideal, for reasons already mentioned + the fact that "new class of antibiotics" can be interpreted in so many ways. There clearly has been a long hiatus (how long I havent bothered to count yet), because the last 4 Mythomane mentioned above are actually not new classes.
I suggest to think of a few alternative hooks as there are interesting aspects of Teixobactin other than the hiatus:
  • novel growing technique of using a clever little lobster trap, eh, microscopic in situ incubator, the iChip
  • discovery from a Maine soil specimen ( also interesting choice for reasons we can discuss)
  • promising antibacterial spectrum (fluroquinolones being the last antimycobacterial-antibacterial compound I remember)- ok, not such a hot topic outside my, the Inf Dis world, but....
  • possibly the slow development of resistance (although VERY speculative IMO)
  • ....(your idea here)...
Has anyone read anything about the naming ? usually it's proprietary info, but τείχος being an obvious Greek word (education) I do wonder ! --Wuerzele (talk) 11:03, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

wikt:en:teixobactin

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Can someone check the word etymology for this (on Wiktionary)? Does "bactin" mean the breakdown of a cell wall?

To me it appears as if it were that it pertained to bacteria and wikt:en:-in suffix

-- 65.94.40.137 (talk) 04:38, 16 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Effectiveness against VRSA

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I haven't seen reports of this being tested against any of the VRSAs. It's probably a job for later, as it entails risk for the researchers. IMHO, those results will tell us a lot about how much it's worth. (I am not professional in this area, and have no relevant affiliations.) ArthurDent006.5 (talk) 07:45, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Brilacidin

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I would suggest the editors who are working on this article to take a look at Brilacidin. Dmatteng (talk) 16:25, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

First regarding the claim that Teixobactin is a new class of anti-biotics in decades (though current wording on this article seems to be just right.) Second is that both of them are small molecule antibiotics. Third is that Teixobactin seems to be only indicated for infections caused by gram-positive bacteria, whereby Brilacidin is for both gram-positive and gram-negative, and also anti-fungal. Fourth - both of them seems to tackle the issue of bacteria developing resistance.
What is also important is that Teixobactin well behind in development stages than Brilacidin. I also noted that Teixobactin is much more hyped, and for some reason there is no widespread news about Brilacidin and it wasn't DYKed. Brilacidin is likely to get FDA's approval much sooner than Teixobactin. It is also in Phase 2b of trials and got fast track designation from USFDA. Dmatteng (talk) 07:59, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Patent section

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Can anyone remind me which section in WO 2014089053 proves "Northeastern University holds a patent on the iChip method of culturing and isolating bacteria in situ in soil, and licensed this patent to a privately held company, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which owns the patent rights to any compounds produced."?--The Master (talk) 11:05, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's actually in the NY Times source. I believe the patent WO2014089053A1 and the cited patent US7011957 are the relevant intellectual property being discussed. Abierma3 (talk) 11:55, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

DEHughes

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DEHughes is arguing that NovoBiotic is the sole discoverer based on a press release by NovoBiotic. The article says it was discovered by a consortium, the people named in the Nature publication. It includes the chip maker, chemists, and some university biologists. History of penicillin: It is useful to remember for penicillin that Fleming noticed the bactericide effect in 1928 which led to Florey and Chain isolating it in 1938, the structure was elucidated in 1945 by Hodgkin, and it was synthesized in 1957 by Sheehan. The 1945 Nobel Prize went to Fleming, Florey and Chain. The pharmaceutical company Beecham then tried to take credit in a decade long patent battle. The patent for Teixobactin lists the inventors as S. Slava Epstein of ‎Northeastern University and Kim Lewis of NovoBiotic. They may reach a legal agreement that NovoBiotic is the sole discover. For instance see Tesla where Elon Musk, an early investor, reached a legal agreement to be named a "founder" even though his name does not appear on the original incorporation papers. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 13:08, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hughes, who is the president of Novobiotic, claims that the October 2016 issue of Scientific American lists Novobiotic as the main author of the paper. I've not yet found that, and "main author" is not necessarily the same as "sole author." I'm all for credit where credit is due, but yeah, the sources are splitting the credit instead of letting any particular group hog all the glory. Ian.thomson (talk) 13:40, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

iChip

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"iChip" (used throughout the article) sounds like a marketing term, besides evoking a semiconductor device used in an iPhone. Any thoughts about writing it as "isolation chip" in the article text? The shorter name should still be mentioned briefly. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 19:19, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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The link to the JSMol 3D model shows an incorrect totally planar structure. This may potentially mislead readers without a basic chemistry knowledge to realise this. There seems to be a number of published studies on its structure and mode of action relationship. Editors familiar with the work in this area may be able to suggest an appropriate link. Triops56 19:53, 9 May 2022 (UTC) Triops56 20:00, 9 May 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by David1956 (talk • contribs)

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