SOUTH BEND — Have scientists found a way to stop the staph superbug called MRSA? Researchers at the University of Notre Dame say they may be a step closer.

Just last fall, we introduced you to Amy and David Niekirk's 5-year-old son. He was in the hospital, diagnosed, they said, with a dangerous infection.

“It was so painful for him,” Amy told WSBT News. “He would cry and cry and cry. It was bad."

It was MRSA — a kind of staph infection on the rise and passed on in school, at the gym, or through close contact nearly anywhere else.

"If it does get bad, it can get into your bloodstream, it can affect your heart muscle, it can affect your lungs,” Linda Zeese, of St. Joseph Regional Medical Center, told WSBT News in an October 2007 interview. “It can be [deadly].”

In October, a study by the Journal of American Medical Association found 94,000 people were in infected by MRSA in 2005 and 18,000 died.

For decades, scientists have been searching for ways to stop this so-called superbug. Just recently researchers say they think they've come one big step closer — researchers right here at Notre Dame.

“We are extremely delighted about what has been done,” said Dr. Shariar Mobashery of Notre Dame’s Chemistry and Biochemistry program.

Dr. Mobashery and his team say they've been able to generate molecules that successfully kill the bug. It's now patented and considered a major advance in the fight against MRSA.

“For us, I think it’s a big breakthrough," Dr. Mobashery said.

But Mobashery says it's not a true victory just yet.

“We are excited about it, but this is not a solution to our problems around the corner, if you will, within the coming months,” he said.

While they have been able to kill MRSA in the lab, they don't know if it works in people.

Dr. Mobashery said it will soon be up to pharmaceutical companies to show interest and move ahead with experimentation and development of a drug to test on people. That, he said, could take years.