Lantibiotics (and there is no spelling mistake) are a potential new class of antibiotics for clinical applications and food preservation. Their drawback is however their inability to penetrate the outer membranes of Gram-negative bacteria.
John Vederas and colleagues, at University of Alberta in Canada, try to overcome this problem by developing new ‘siderophores – transporters’ able to deliver lantibiotics to the targeted bacteria.
If you want to find out more about what happened next and the scope and limitation of siderophore-mediated drug transport for the development of new antibiotics download this HOT article which is free to access until 8th March.
Chemical synthesis and biological evaluation of gallidermin-siderophore conjugates
Sabesan Yoganathan, Clarissa S. Sit and John C. Vederas
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2011
DOI: 10.1039/C0OB00846J
