“The inspiration for this discovery came from the recent success of cancer immunotherapy,” said Marcos Pires, who led the study. He is referring to the 2018 Nobel Prize for medicine that was given to the scientists who created cancer immunotherapy, which harnesses the power of the immune system to destroy cancer cells. This study wanted to find out whether a similar system could use the immune system to help antibiotics work more efficiently. Pires and his team tested the new compound on a range of bacteria that the World Health Organization has designated as high-priority because they are so resistant to antibiotics. While the new drug has yet to be tested in humans, the researchers saw no signs of toxicity when it was tested on animal cells.