Although not completely destroy bacterial and viral infections, penicillin has been a revolution in medicine and its introduction has saved hundreds of millions of lives in the last century. It was unique for its broad spectrum of activity. But since its introduction in medical practice so far appeared many new, exotic and constantly evolving strains of viruses and bacteria that are terrible for health capability - develop resistance to even our most powerful antibiotics.

Scientists at the lab "Lincoln" at MIT are about to end this constant race between human antibiotics and antibiotic resistance of microorganisms.
 
They created a drug that has proven effective against almost all strains of 15 of the most common viruses in the world. Rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 flu, stomach viruses, polio virus, dengue fever and other hemorrhagic viruses, causing internal bleeding.

At present there are few drugs which are effective against specific viruses, such as HIV protease inhibitors controlling agent responsible for AIDS. Unfortunately, they are expensive and often - susceptible to viral resistance. Therefore, the researchers introduced a new approach to the problem - light, which searches and finds the infected cells, not with the virus, and with any type of viral agents. Once localized, these cells are destroyed to prevent the spread of infection.

When a virus particle infects a cell, it "distracts" cellular structures and makes them subject to one goal: to create more copies of the virus. They leave the cell, often destroying her in the process and invade new cells for the same purpose. During the process of replication, viruses establish long strands of the double-stranded RNA which is not present in human or animal organisms. The human body has a protective mechanism that is triggered by the detection of similar chains, but many viruses are able to evade detection and cause delayed immune response that usually starts too late.

To prevent this problem, Todd Rider, head of the research group introduced a new strategy against the attackers. According to it, a much more efficient than the current inducing an enhanced immune response would be, if coupled with a protein binding to the foreign RNA of another protein that induces apoptosis - programmed cell death. Similar compounds exist in nature and the team was able to combine them. Because of their natural origin, they are capable of little aid to pass through the cell membranes of all human tissues and cells. When the drug gets into the infected cell, he programmed for self-destruction, but through uninfected cells, this remains intact.

The drug has been proven non-toxic, and its few side effects do not cause serious health threats. It has already passed laboratory and experimental stage and soon became its clinical trials. If they also succeed, scientists are convinced: up to 3 years the drug could be on the market.
 
They are proud of their successes achieved so far because they believe they have found a "penicillin of the 21st century."