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antibiotic (an″te-) (an″ti-bi-ot´ik) destructive of life. a chemical substance having the capacity, in dilute solution, to kill or inhibit growth of microorganisms. Antibiotics that are sufficiently nontoxic to the host are used as chemotherapeutic agents to treat infectious diseases of humans, animals, and plants. The term was originally restricted to substances produced by microorganisms, but has been extended to include synthetic and semisynthetic compounds of similar chemical activity. antineoplastic antibiotics
, antitumor antibiotics
a class of antineoplastic agents that apparently affect the function or the synthesis, or both, of nucleic acids and thus are cell cycle nonspecific. See
also antineoplastic therapy. beta-lactam antibiotic
, β-lactam antibiotic
any of a group of antibiotics, including the cephalosporins and the penicillins, whose chemical structure contains a specific type of ring. They act by interfering with the formation of the bacterial wall. broad-spectrum antibiotic
one that is effective against a wide range of bacteria, both gram-positive and gram-negative.
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