Two novel ways of killing the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB) have been discovered by Scientists.

Their findings could lead to a potent TB therapy that would also prevent resistant TB strains from developing, says researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

William R. Jacobs, Jr., the study's senior author and professor of microbiology & immunology and of genetics at Einstein, as well as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, said, "This approach is totally different from the way any other anti-TB drug works. In the past few years, extremely drug resistant strains of TB have arisen that can't be eliminated by any drugs, so new strategies for attacking TB are urgently needed"

Jacobs said, "We were amazed when we knocked out GlgE that we saw this DNA damage response. That's usually a very effective way to kill bacteria, when you start damaging the DNA."

The researchers discovered a second way of killing TB after observing a crucial connection between their novel alpha glucan pathway and a second pathway that also synthesizes alpha glucans.

Explaining the whole process, Jacobs said, "The bacteria that cause TB need to synthesize alpha glucans. And from the bacterial point of view, you can't knock out both of these alpha glucan pathways simultaneously or you're dead. So if we were to make drugs against GlgE and Rv3032, the combination would be extremely potent. And since TB bacteria need both of those alpha glucan pathways to live, it's very unlikely that this combination therapy would leave behind surviving bacteria that could develop into resistant strains." (With Inputs from Agencies)