New superbug-fighting antibiotic discovered up humans' noses

Believe it or not, some of us are carrying drug-resistant bacteria around in our noses; these colonies make infection more likely. But scientists have discovered a new weapon to use against these bugs — and it also lives in your nose.

It may be years before the new compound comes to market, but its discovery, published in the journal Nature, points to the value of an untapped resource for antibiotics. That resource, of course, is the human body. And new antibiotics are crucial for fighting drug-resistant bugs like MRSA, a variant of the Staphylococcus aureus, or staph, that doesn’t respond to a major class of antibiotics. The drug detailed in Nature not only fights MRSA, it can knock out a wide range of other bacteria.

We carry...