A Daniel Pilch, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology, and fellow scientists are racing to develop a new class of antibiotics to treat methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections, which are responsible for 19,000 deaths annually and represent $3 billion in annual health care costs. MRSA new experimental antibiotic developed by a team of scientists at Rutgers University successfully treats the deadly MRSA infection and restores the efficacy of a commonly prescribed antibiotic that has become ineffective against MRSA. In research published in the July issue of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Rutgers scientists say the combination of their newly developed antibiotic, TXA709, with cefdinir, an antibiotic that has been on the market for almost two decades, successfully treated the MRSA infection in animals. “This is important because even though TXA709 is effective on its own in treating MRSA, combining it with cefdinir—used New > Antibiotic Effective > Against BY > ROBIN L A L LY • P O R T R A I T S B Y > JOHN EMERSON Robert Wood Johnson I MEDICINE 27