The enormous success of antibiotics is seriously threatened by the development of resistance to many drugs available on the market. So the search for new antibiotics that are less prone to resistance is on.
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a possible solution that has attracted considerable attention but they have some drawbacks including high cost of manufacturing. Now Steven Firestine and colleagues at Wayne State University in the US have examined the potential of a new class of benzophenone-based membrane targeted antibiotics (BPMTAs).
Firestine shows that these agents release potassium ions from treated bacteria which results in disruption of the bacterial membrane potential. This membrane-targeted disruption means that BPMTAs have excellent activity against antibiotic-resistant strains like MRSA and VRSA.
The team have demonstrated the promising potential of these agents by using them to cure mice of a lethal MRSA infection. They were also unable to develop a mutant resistant to the agents.
Interested? Read the article in OBC that is free to access for the next four weeks!
Examination of a synthetic benzophenone membrane-targeted antibiotic
Sunil K. Vooturi, Mahender B. Dewal and Steven M. Firestine
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1OB05643C
