"If we don't want to watch antibiotic-resistant microbes to thwart the successes of modern medicine, we need novel tools that facilitate targeted treatment of pathogens," said Jörg Vogel, managing director of the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research and director of the Institute for Molecular Infection Biology at Julius Maximilian University.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA vaccines were quickly brought to market with the ability to teach the body's cells how to make a protein triggering an immune response. Now, scientists want to leverage RNA-based medicine for the development of a new type of antibiotic that can be used to treat bacterial infections.

A study, in the current issue of Nucleic Acids Research, showed that mRNA-based antibiotics are in principle suitable for combating uropathogenic strains of Escherichia coli. Nonetheless, several important questions still need to be addressed before using this approach in clinics.