Publications

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…

Oxidative damage and delayed replication allow viable to go undetected.

Date Published: November 24, 2021
“Viable but nonculturable” states of bacteria pose challenges for environmental and clinical microbiology, but their biological mechanisms remain obscure. (Mtb), the leading cause of death from infection until the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, affords a notable example of this phenotype. Mtb can enter into a “differentially detectable” (DD) state associated…

New Investigations with Lupane Type A-Ring Azepane Triterpenoids for Antimycobacterial Drug Candidate Design.

Date Published: November 21, 2021
Twenty lupane type A-ring azepano-triterpenoids were synthesized from betulin and its related derivatives and their antitubercular activity against , mono-resistant MTB strains, and nontuberculous strains and Mycobacterium were investigated in the framework of AToMIc (Anti-mycobacterial Target or Mechanism Identification Contract) realized by the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, NIAID,…

Comparative Efficacy of the Novel Diarylquinoline TBAJ-876 and Bedaquiline against a Resistant Mutant in a Mouse Model of Tuberculosis.

Date Published: November 17, 2021
Bedaquiline (BDQ, B) is the first-in-class diarylquinoline to be approved for treatment of tuberculosis (TB). Recent guidelines recommend its use in treatment of multidrug- and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR/XDR-TB). The newly approved regimen combining BDQ with pretomanid and linezolid is the first 6-month oral regimen proven to be effective against…
Courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine