Thiopeptide Antibiotics Act on Both Host and Microbe to Deliver Double Punch on Mycobacterial Infection

Mycobacterial infection has long been one of the most serious infectious diseases throughout the world. Since the abuse of antibiotics, and for other reasons, the emergence of bacterial drug-resistance is now one of the most urgent clinical problems. Nowadays, the speed of antibiotic development is actually far more slowly than that of the bacterial drug-resistance generation. Thereby, searching for new efficient antibiotics is a top priority in pharmaceutical studies. In this commentary, we summarized the recent advances regarding the development of new thiopeptide antibiotics via biosynthetic strategy and the discovery of a novel dual mechanism of action against Mycobacterium marinum-represented intracellular pathogens.