In 1946, just a year after winning the Nobel Prize for discovering penicillin, Sir Alexander Fleming noted the Achilles heel of antibiotics: "the production of resistant strains of bacteria." Indeed, the greatest medicine in history has gradually become less effective. The incredibly rapid reproduction of bacteria combined with their ability to impart acquired resistance to other bacteria by transferring genetic material have led to today's "superbugs": bacteria that are refractory to all conventional antimicrobial treatment.

         Several factors, such as overuse of antibiotics in hospitals, and, possibly, widespread use of antibiotics in livestock farming, have hastened the development of antibiotic resistance. Currently in the U.S., 90,000 people die each year from bacterial infections acquired in hospitals, and 70 percent of these bacteria are resistant to at least one antibiotic drug.

        A new generation of drugs, called "Ramp" antimicrobials, is under development to treat resistant strains of bacteria. By emulating the body's own defense mechanisms, Ramp drugs are much