Scientists have developed an innovative way of using one of the biggest problems facing health services—antibiotic resistance—to develop drugs to combat some of the most intractable diseases.

Amyloid diseases such as Parkinsons, Alzheimers and type-2 diabetes pose a particular problem for drug designers because they do not present a clear target structure to aim at.

Instead of the disease being linked to a single, easily identifiable species such as the active site of an enzyme or a specific receptor, amyloid diseases are associated with heterogeneous accumulations of proteins sticking together.

This is the key reason why many amyloid diseases are currently incurable.

The new study, published in Nature Chemical Biology, outlines a way of using antibiotic resistance to find chemicals capable of stopping amyloid formation.