Who hasn't heard of Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus Aureus or MRSA. It is a particular virulent highly adaptable bacterial strain, which is now endemic in our hospitals and health centers across the globe, it now affects thousands of people and kills hundreds if not thousands each year.
It's not just super bugs such as MRSA that are causing the medical community to worry. More and more diseases are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Many researchers are already saying that within the next few decades we will enter a "post-antibiotic era", a time when even the most routine infections by today's standards will become life threatening.
Transplant surgery would no longer be possible, simple broken bones, or any invasive procedures would become life threatening.
Despite these worrying statistics there is still time to change our reliance on antibiotics, through better teaching, policy changes and development of other new therapeutic techniques.
Hope may come also from an unlikely ally in the shape of nanoparticles wrapped in a blood cell membrane. These particles have recently shown in lab conditions that they can remove toxins from the body and may even be used to fight bacterial infections.
The results haven't been concluded just yet but results are looking hopeful; nanoparticles could be used to defend our immune systems and neutralize foreign bodies produced by bacteria, including some of the antibiotic resistant strains mentioned earlier.
The nanoparticles have been likened to "nano-sponges" as they can potentially enter a body and target every type of toxin regardless of molecular structure, this would have been unheard of until now, as each toxin currently must undergo significant research to model the appropriate therapy.
If the drug can achieve regulatory approval it will provide a game changing platform in our fight against antibiotic resistant bacteria.