This past summer, my toddler developed an MRSA boil on the back of her chubby leg. The pediatrician explained that Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections were common in schools and daycare facilities. She was remarkably blase about it. I, on the other hand, wasn’t — and neither was my husband a few months later when he developed (and recovered from) an MRSA infection in the lining of his eye. It was pretty scary.

Bacteria are wily, as a host of big-time bacterial diseases like tuberculosis increasingly demonstrate. Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) or extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR TB), anyone? But here’s the good news. Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York are developing a new line of antibiotic compounds that don’t spark bacterial resistance, according to a related press release.

Instead of using antibiotics to kill the microbes that cause cholera and E. coli-related illnesses, these trial compounds permanently disable the nasty microorganisms.