Wayne State Lab Finds Thymosin Beta-4 Kills Little Staph on Its Own but Boosts Several Antibiotics Against It
Wayne State University School of Medicine researchers tested recombinant human thymosin beta-4, the protein that TB-500 is derived from, against a laboratory Staphylococcus aureus strain and two clinical isolates, reporting in Microbiology Spectrum. Alone it had little direct antibacterial activity even at high concentrations, but it acted synergistically with several of the four antibiotics tested (moxifloxacin, ciprofloxacin, oxacillin, vancomycin), mainly against free-floating bacteria. It did little against established biofilms, and all of the work was in lab dishes.