Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Scripps Research have found a way to restore the killing power of vancomycin, one of medicine's last-resort antibiotics, against bacteria that had evolved resistance to it. The approach does not involve creating a new antibiotic. Instead, it targets a bacterial enzyme called secreted antigen A, or SagA, using a small molecule called pghi-4, effectively disabling the mechanism bacteria use to evade vancomycin.
When vancomycin and pghi-4 were combined in laboratory experiments, vancomycin's ability to kill vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium, or VREfm, was restored. The required dose of vancomycin dropped by up to eightfold. The findings, published in Nature Communications on June 16, 2026, were highlighted this week in a CSHL press release drawing renewed attention to the work.
