Tony Zhou is In-Charge of an
international team that is making new breathing medicines that are
patent-pending.
"Tony Zhou" is a professor in the
College of Pharmacy at Purdue University. He has been given $2.4 million by the
National Institutes of Health to fight lung diseases that are no longer treated
with antibiotics.
Professor Zhou is a staff Scholar and an associate professor in the Department
of Industrial and Molecular Pharmaceutics. He is also on the staff of the
Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery and the Purdue Institute of Inflammation,
Immunology, and Infectious Disease. He is in charge of a group of experts from
Australia, Thailand, and the US who are working on new breathing treatments for
lung diseases that are still waiting patent.
"We offer a promising way to deal with the worldwide issue of
antimicrobial resistance," Zhou said. "If our invention is
successfully developed, it could save tens of thousands of lives from lung
infections that are very dangerous, such as cystic fibrosis and
ventilator-assisted pneumonia."
Zhou's work on antibiotic resistance has led to more than 70 peer-reviewed
journal articles, two U.S. patents, and four patent applications. Pharmaceutics
published the most recent peer-reviewed article in March 2024, and
Pharmaceutical Research published the most recent article in August 2022.
With this new NIH grant, Zhou has now earned a total of six government grants
worth a total of $10 million. These include three NIH R01 grants given over the
last eight years to support study into breathing therapies.
Resistance to Antibiotics is a Threat
Thomas Sors, who is in charge of scientific planning and connections at the
Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology, and Infectious Disease, said that
bacteria that are becoming more resistant to standard treatments pose a serious
threat to world health.
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that drug-resistant
infections kill more than 35,000 people and affect over 2.8 million people
every year in the U.S.," Sors said. "This shows how urgently we need
new ways to deal with this crisis."
"The NIH, the CDC, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America say that
gram-negative "superbugs" like Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas
aeruginosa, and Acinetobacter baumannii are some of the most dangerous
microorganisms that are resistant to multiple drugs." It's too bad that
new medicines aren't being made faster; lung diseases caused by bacteria that
are immune to antibiotics can be deadly.
Creating Medicines that Can be Breathed in to Help the Lungs
Zhou said that giving many antibiotics by mouth or IV doesn't always work to
treat lung infections in many people because the drugs don't reach the
infection spot well enough and are harmful to the body as a whole.
"This makes lung infections caused by bacteria that are resistant very
hard to treat. This is shown by the fact that lung infections are the fourth
most common cause of death in the world," Zhou said.
Antibiotics work better when they go straight to the site of the infection in
the lungs, which is what Zhou's aerosol treatments do. It is also possible to
avoid widespread poisoning with medicines that are inhaled because the body
absorbs much fewer of them.
"We also use cutting edge spray drying methods to combine two or more
antibiotics that work well together into a single particle. This way, they can
stick to the infection site and kill as many bacteria as possible," he
explained.
Next Steps in Development
Early tests on animals showed that the new aerosol medicines were better at
killing germs and less harmful.
Zhou said that the team's goal is to make prescription drugs that can treat
resistant bacterial lung illnesses. The NIH funds will be used to improve the
composition and gather experimental data so that a New Drug Application can be
filed if necessary.
Eric Barker, the Jeannie and Jim Chaney Dean of Purdue's College of Pharmacy,
said, "Zhou's cutting-edge research is a real breakthrough and perfectly
exemplifies Purdue's commitment to fight the global crisis of antimicrobial
resistance."
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