The village of Colney just outside Norwich City, in Norfolk England is home to the John Innes Centre (JIC), and the JIC is home to Dr. Michael McArthur and Professor Mervyn Bibb head of the JIC Department of Molecular Biology. Together they have achieved a possible solution to the rise in SuperBugs or super germs that are increasingly fatally resistant to current antibiotics. But not only that, as if that wasn't good news enough the actual application could be the world's first approved and consistently effective gene therapy. To understand the dual significance of this achievement it is necessary to know why the rising resistance of certain bacterium to antibiotics is a really big problem, and how Michael McArthur has come up with a probable resolution.

In 1947 just four years after Ernst Chain discovered how to isolate and concentrate penicillin for mass production, certain strains of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus (Staph aureus or a Staph) were discovered to be resistant to penicillin. This marked Staph as a bacterium known to be highly adaptable and therefore resistant to antibiotics if exposed to them and subsequently surviving that exposure. The incidence of penicillin resistant staph infections now identified continued to rise and in 1950, 40% of hospital resident staph was found to be resistant to penicillin. By 1960 this had risen to 80% and developed one year earlier Methicillin was released by Beecham. This proved a successful treatment for just two years when Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was identified in England in 1961.

Enter Vancomycin discovered by E.C. Kornfeld at Eli Lily, a global pharmaceutical company, within a soil sample from the depths of the Borneo jungles collected by a missionary. The so named Vancomycin was found to be produced by the Streptomyces orientalis bacterium contained within the Borneo jungle soil sample. With a growing rise in penicillin infections the FDA assisted Eli Lily and Vancomycin was approved for use in 1958. However though Vancomycin was potently effective against penicillin resistant staph it had a number of problems in its use and side effects.

Some of these effects like damage to the kidneys and hearing were caused by early manufacturing impurities, but others rare adverse effects like anaphylaxis, red man syndrome and superinfection still remain. This lead to Vancomycin being sidelined when Methicillin was approved shortly afterwards and which quickly grew to be the

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