Non-antibiotic pharmaceutical agents as antibiotic adjuvants

Engineered bacteriophage targeting gene networks as adjuvants for antibiotic therapy.

Antimicrobial drug development is increasingly lagging behind the evolution of antibiotic resistance, and as a result, there is a pressing need for new antibacterial therapies that can be readily designed and implemented. In this work, we engineered bacteriophage to overexpress proteins and attack gene networks that are not directly targeted by antibiotics. We show that suppressing the SOS netw...

Antibiotic adjuvants: identification and clinical use

The discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928 changed the course of medicine. Since then, antibiotics have represented virtually the only effective treatment option for bacterial infections. However, their efficacy has been seriously compromised by over-use and misuse of these drugs, which have led to the emergence of bacteria that are resistant to many commonly used antibiotics. Bac...

Non-coding RNAs as antibiotic targets.

Antibiotics inhibit a wide range of essential processes in the bacterial cell, including replication, transcription, translation and cell wall synthesis. In many instances, these antibiotics exert their effects through association with non-coding RNAs. This review highlights many classical antibiotic targets (e.g. rRNAs and the ribosome), explores a number of emerging targets (e.g. tRNAs, RNase...

Impact of antibiotic restrictions: the pharmaceutical perspective.

The development of new antibiotics is dependent on their performance in economic models that favour products with large markets, high levels of potential sales and low development risks. There is a trend toward more severe and more widespread market restrictions for the use of antibiotics, ostensibly to control resistance, though they may be enacted through the control of drug budgets. The rest...

The most recent antibiotic agents.