In what turned out to be one of the most important accidents of all time, Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming returned to his laboratory after a vacation in 1928 to find a clear zone surrounding a piece of mold that had infiltrated a petri dish full of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), a common skin bacterium he was growing.

That region of no bacterial growth was the unplanned birth of a medical miracle, penicillin, and would lead to the era of antibiotics. Now, in a paper published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have announced another accidentally discovered, potentially game-changing treatment—one that may provide an alternative immune-based solution to the danger of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

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