Chemists develop simple new platform for development of macrolide antibiotics

Researchers have created a new, greatly simplified, platform for antibiotic discovery that may go a long way to solving the crisis of antibiotic resistance. In a study, researchers describe ‘a platform where we assemble eight (chemical) building blocks by a simple process to make macrolide antibiotics’ without using erythromycin, the original macrolide antibiotic, and the drug upon which all others in the class have been based since the early 1950s.