New strains of antibiotics that are resistant to the most powerful antibiotics have emerged in recent years. Every year, these strains, often referred to as superbugs, which includes drug-resistant types of tuberculosis and staphylococcus, infect over 2 million people across the country, killing at least 23,000. Although there is a dire need for effective new treatments, just a small amount of classes of antibiotics to treat the superbugs have been discovered over the past decade.

MIT engineers have started to use a gene-editing system to disable any target gene, indicating that they can selectively eradicate bacteria carrying harmful genes that result in disease or antibiotic resistance.

The team of researchers, led by Timothy Lu, an associate professor of biological engineering and electrical engineering and computer science, described their findings in the September 21 issue of Nature Biotechnology. In August 2014, Lu’s lab reported a unique approach to fighting resistant bacteria by identifying combinations of genes that can work together to improve antibiotic susceptibility of bacteria to antibiotics.

Lu is hopeful that both technologies can assist in the development of new drugs to fight the increasing problems posed by drug-resistant bacteria.

Lu said in a statement, “This is a pretty crucial moment when there are fewer and fewer new antibiotics available, but more and more antibiotic resistance evolving.” He continued, “We’ve been interested in finding new ways to combat antibiotic resistance, and these papers offer two different strategies for doing that.”

According to the World Health Organization, there were approximately 450,000 new cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in 2012, and extensive drug-resistant tuberculosis has been identified in 92 countries.