Glaxo Drug Looms as Deadly Hospital Infections Spread

GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the U.K.’s biggest drugmaker, said it has come up with an antibiotic designed to circumvent the drug resistance that makes many hospital-acquired infections difficult to treat.

The drug works by blocking an old target, an enzyme that enables bacteria to reproduce, in a new way, according to the paper published in the journal Nature. Medicines such as Bayer AG’s Cipro, called quinolones, have been used to control the enzyme since 1962. Now bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to that class of drugs, the report said.