Different drugs for bad bugs: Antivirulence strategies in the age of antibiotic resistance

By S. Dickey, Gordon Y C Cheung, M. Otto. Nature reviews. Drug discovery, 2017

669 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The rapid evolution and dissemination of antibiotic resistance among bacterial pathogens are outpacing the development of new antibiotics, but antivirulence agents provide an alternative. These agents can circumvent antibiotic resistance by disarming pathogens of virulence factors that facilitate human disease while leaving bacterial growth pathways — the target of traditional antibiotics — intact. Either as stand-alone medications or together with antibiotics, these drugs are intended to treat bacterial infections in a largely pathogen-specific manner. Notably, development of antivirulence drugs requires an in-depth understanding of the roles that diverse virulence factors have in disease processes. In this Review, we outline the theory behind antivirulence strategies and provide examples of bacterial features that can be targeted by antivirulence approaches. Furthermore, we discuss the recent successes and failures of this paradigm, and new developments that are in the pipeline.

Subfields: Clinical Biochemistry, Infectious Diseases, Insect Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ad5f9cddbc295b4918a8a3f8f07eae5052e304c7

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Citations in the corpus

Design of a specific peptide against phenolic glycolipid-1 from Mycobacterium leprae and its implications in leprosy bacilli entry (2022, background): “(4) In mycobacteria, this approach has been explored only in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium marinum, and the approach targeted the PhoPR regulon, SapM, and ESX-1 secretion system.(4,5,6) Some promising candidates are in the preclinical stages and are being tested in animal models.”
Antimicrobial Resistance: A Growing Serious Threat for Global Public Health (2023, background): “However, due to challenges in development and clinical use, antivirulence drugs would be suitable as adjunct or combination therapy with antibiotics [89].”