Australian native plants: Novel therapeutics for global infections and diseases

In 2016, two health threats confronted the world: the alarming increase in hospital-acquired infections due to increasingly pathogenic antibiotic resistant bacteria, and the emergence of the Zika virus. Antibiotics are central to the global healthcare system, reducing the burden of common infectious diseases and underpinning positive outcomes from medical interventions. The recent spread of pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) and colistin-resistant Escherichia coli has depleted the supply of efficacious antibiotics. Globally, the widespread emergence of resistant bacteria already claims 700,000 lives per year. Further, it is predicted that by 2050, 10 million people will be killed annually i.e. one every three seconds. Thus, the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistant pathogens among human and animal populations worldwide has shifted attention to the need for more broad-spectrum antibiotics. To that end, using the well diffusion assay, we evaluated the bactericidal potential of extracts obtained from an Australian native plant (denoted species 8472). Of the 16 bacteria screened, only Klebsiella pneumoniae was found to be impervious to the extract. Overall, species 8472 was shown to be highly potent against both Gram-positive (MRSA, VREs, Bacillus cereus, Streptococcus pyogenes) and Gram-negative (E.coli, multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, Proteus spp.) bacteria. These findings will have a significant global impact given the dearth of antibiotics currently available that have the ability to effectively clear an infection caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria