Narrator: This is Science Today. A new type of antibiotic drug, called peptoids, has been found to be a very effective treatment for infectious Candida, a yeast infection that is sometimes life-threatening. Maho Uchida, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco used a powerful microscope at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to see well inside the structure of cells and discovered that peptoids are a very good treatment for these infectious and increasingly drug-resistant strains of Candida.
Uchida: We found that this pathogenic form of Candida didn't form any pathogenic forms, so we managed to prevent this pathogenic form.
Narrator: Uchida explains that unlike peptides, or the natural form of the drug, peptoids, which were developed by researchers at Stanford University, do not degrade.
Uchida: Peptoid is much cheaper to produce and then they can do a little modification by adding a slight change and then it's not getting degraded easily. So, it appeared to be a very good drug.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.