Next-gen drugs to tackle a leading killer
Dr Eugene Roscioli
“It’s a snowball effect. The more exacerbations you have, the more you get and the more permanent the damage is to your lungs.”
Exacerbations make life hell for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Azithromycin is a common antibiotic used to manage COPD exacerbations, by killing bacteria and reducing inflammation.
The problem is that Azithromycin doesn’t kill all bacteria. It also blocks an essential natural bacteria removal process in our cells called autophagy, said Dr Eugene Roscioli.
“In this case, the bacteria don’t die. They acclimatise to their surroundings and become stronger, making COPD exacerbations worse.”
Dr Roscioli is working to engineer a version of Azithromycin that works to eliminate bacteria that causes COPD exacerbations but does not interfere with autophagy.
“This would allow the natural autophagy processes to eliminate bacteria themselves – rather than making it worse.”
Because the physical structure of a drug affects how it works, Dr Roscioli’s is team experimenting with different shapes and structures of Azithromycin to develop a version that has the desired effects without the negative effects.
“If we can cut off the leading causes of exacerbations, we’d be hopeful that people with COPD could have less hospital admissions and have a similar length and quality of life as everyone else.”
Your support will help Dr Roscioli to develop the next generation of Azithromycin drugs to help reverse growing threat of COPD.