"ELife" A New Way to Develop New Antibiotics

"We have created a'Trojan horse' that allows antibiotics to reach the desired tissues undisturbed until the bacteria themselves activate the drug and effectively release the antibiotic's'army'," senior author Audrey R.

Antimicrobial resistance poses a serious threat to public health, and some estimates indicate that by 2050, antimicrobial resistance infections will cause up to 10 million deaths each year

To solve this problem, the researchers adopted a new method that relies on the use of bacterial metabolism, a process that is critical to the prosperity of bacteria

One way to overcome this challenge is to chemically mask the unwanted negative charges with another chemical group

The research focus is on Staphylococcus aureus, because methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been marked as a “serious threat” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

After determining that GloB and FrmB are suitable bacterial enzyme targets, the researchers characterized the three-dimensional structure of GloB and FrmB and determined their active sites, which will guide the structure of FrmB and GloB targeting prodrugs The design provides the possibility

John said: "This work paves the way for the structure-oriented development of Staphylococcus aureus-specific prodrugs and establishes a pipeline for the identification of other microbial prodrug-activating enzymes

Original Search : Justin J Miller, Ishaan T Shah, Jayda Hatten, Yasaman Barekatain, Elizabeth A Mueller, Ahmed M Moustafa, Rachel L Edwards, Cynthia S Dowd, Paul Planet, Florian L Muller, Joseph Jez, Audrey R Odom John.