Publications

Delamanid or pretomanid? A Solomonic judgement!

Date Published: March 31, 2022
Given the low treatment success rates of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), novel TB drugs are urgently needed. The landscape of TB treatment has changed considerably over the last decade with the approval of three new compounds: bedaquiline, delamanid and pretomanid. Of these, delamanid and pretomanid belong to the same class of…

Synthesis and biological evaluation of orally active prodrugs and analogs of para-aminosalicylic acid (PAS).

Date Published: March 15, 2022
Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the world’s most deadly infectious diseases resulting in nearly 1.3 million deaths annually and infecting nearly one-quarter of the population. para-Aminosalicylic acid (PAS), an important second-line agent for treating drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has moderate bioavailability and rapid clearance that necessitate high daily doses of up…

Implications of Metabolic Adaptability on Drug Discovery and Development.

Date Published: March 11, 2022
Tuberculosis remains a global health threat that is being exacerbated by the increase in infections attributed to drug resistant . To combat this, there has been a surge in drug discovery programs to develop new, potent compounds and identify promising drug targets in the pathogen. Two areas of biology that…

DNA-Dependent Binding of Nargenicin to DnaE1 Inhibits Replication in .

Date Published: March 11, 2022
Natural products provide a rich source of potential antimicrobials for treating infectious diseases for which drug resistance has emerged. Foremost among these diseases is tuberculosis. Assessment of the antimycobacterial activity of nargenicin, a natural product that targets the replicative DNA polymerase of , revealed that it is a bactericidal genotoxin…

Critical discussion on drug efflux in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Date Published: February 9, 2022
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) can withstand months of antibiotic treatment. An important goal of tuberculosis research is to shorten the treatment to reduce the burden on patients, increase adherence to the drug regimen and thereby slow down the spread of drug resistance. Inhibition of drug efflux pumps by small molecules has…

Host-pathogen genetic interactions underlie tuberculosis susceptibility in genetically diverse mice.

Date Published: February 3, 2022
The outcome of an encounter with () depends on the pathogen’s ability to adapt to the variable immune pressures exerted by the host. Understanding this interplay has proven difficult, largely because experimentally tractable animal models do not recapitulate the heterogeneity of tuberculosis disease. We leveraged the genetically diverse Collaborative Cross…

Tools to develop antibiotic combinations that target drug tolerance in .

Date Published: January 6, 2022
Combination therapy is necessary to treat tuberculosis to decrease the rate of disease relapse and prevent the acquisition of drug resistance, and shorter regimens are urgently needed. The adaptation of to various lesion microenvironments in infection induces various states of slow replication and non-replication and subsequent antibiotic tolerance. This non-heritable…

Novel C-3-(N-alkyl-aryl)-aminomethyl rifamycin SV derivatives exhibit activity against rifampicin-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis RpoB strain and display a different binding mode at the RNAP β-subunit site compared to rifampicin.

Date Published: December 5, 2021
Antimicrobial resistance is a main concern in tuberculosis treatment and is often associated with the emergence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains resistant to rifampicin (RIF), which is one of the cornerstones of tuberculosis chemotherapy. In this study, aminoalkyl-aromatic ring tails were appended to the C3 position of rifamycin core to assess…
Courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine