In an unexpected discovery, scientists in Germany have isolated a novel antibiotic substance from a species of bacteria that lives inside the human nose. The substance, known as lugdunin, is produced specifically by a nasal strain of Staphylococcus lugdunensis, a normal component of the human microbiome. In laboratory experiments, the researchers found that lugdunin effectively blocked the growth of S. aureus, a common disease-causing agent. In rats, they showed that nasal colonization with S. aureus was significantly reduced by intranasal inoculation with lugdunin-producing bacteria.
The scientists made their discovery while trying to figure out why the majority of human noses do not harbor S. aureus. They isolated some 90 different types of human nasal bacteria and investigated the ability of each to block the growth of S. aureus. Only S. lugdunensis succeeded. Further experiments showed that the antibiotic effect of S. lugdunensis was due to lugdunin, which turned out to also prevent the growth of multiple other strains of disease-causing bacteria, including a type of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA). The rise of such antibiotic-resistant strains of organisms—which are capable of evading all but only a handful of available antibiotics—is a major public health concern.
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