​The patient turned up at his GP practice clutching a letter to his chest and telling the receptionist “I must see my doctor today!” before bursting in to tears.
 
The receptionist got a message to the doctor who agreed to slot the patient in to this morning clinic as soon as possible. When the patient was finally seen he presented a letter to the doctor. The letter from Public Health England (PHE) said “patients who have undergone heart surgery (valve and coronary artery bypass grafting) since 2007 were at risk of developing a severe infection, Mycobacterium chimaera. Although the risk remains low patients should contact their GP for further assessment”.  The patient explained to his GP that he had had heart valve replacement surgery last year and was now very worried he might be unknowingly infected by a mythological creature.

Okay, it may not look like much but the antibiotic in the diagram above may just represent the saviour of antimicrobial therapy! Or rather, the method by which this antibiotic was created may be what really saves us! I’m very excited!!!
 
The picture shows a modified version of the antibiotic Vancomycin from a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS… unfortunate acronym!). The authors Okano et al have “manufactured” this new version of Vancomycin to have potent activity against normally Vancomycin-resistant bacteria.