For nearly 80 years, antibiotics have protected us from the planet’s deadliest bacteria. But some bacteria have evolved defenses against current antibiotics faster than we can develop new ones, resulting in multidrug resistant strains impervious to virtually anything we throw at them. Antibiotics may have changed the world, but they didn’t stop it from changing.

The situation is particularly worrisome when dealing with a group of gram-negative bacteria found predominantly in hospitals. Without an entirely new way to combat them, these bugs pose a serious threat to a vulnerable population, and could send us back to a time when minor infections or common procedures became deadly.

This impending threat has driven our scientists to develop a novel class of antibiotics that the world has never seen before. Over five years of research originating from a partnership with RQx Pharmaceuticals, a multidisciplinary team created what may become the first new class of antibiotic against gram-negative bacteria in nearly 50 years. To learn more about this exciting pre-clinical research watch the video below.

If you want to learn even more, read the paper from Genentech scientists here.