An international research team said it has discovered an important signal transmitting pathway in bacteria, which block the bacterial pathogenicity when damaged, suggesting new directions for drug development.
The council said that a research team led by Chou Shan-ho (周三和), a professor at National Chung Hsing University’s Institute of Biochemistry, and Robert Ryan, a professor at the University of Dundee’s College of Life Sciences in the UK, has identified the modulating factor that allows bacteria to gather together causing life-threatening infections.
“Most bacteria are single-celled organisms and their pathogenicity only occur when many of them get together,” Chou said, “so we try to destroy them, by blocking the communication between them, thus allowing our body to have enough time to produce the effective immune reaction for killing the bacteria.”
He said antibiotics in the past remained effective for about 20 to 30 years before bacteria became antibiotics-resistant, but now sometimes it only takes two to three years.
The team’s discovery may contribute to developing antibiotics that will not lead to drug-resistant strains, boost immune responses and become a new effective direction for drug development, he said.
Many drugs today are designed to kill specific disease-causing bacteria. Antibiotics overuse has increased the virulence of drug-resistant strains, the National Science Council said.
A US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found at least 23,000 Americans die from these infections annually.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods