Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 18, Issue 22, 2018

The menace of multi-drug resistance by bacterial pathogens that are responsible for infectious diseases in humans and animals cannot be over-emphasized. Many bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics by one or more combination of resistance mechanisms namely, efflux pump activation thereby reducing bacteria intracellular antibiotic concentration, synthesizing a protein that protects target site causing poor antibiotic affinity to the binding site, or mutations in DNA and topoisomerase gene coding that alters residues in the binding sites. The ability to use a combination of these resistance mechanisms among others creates a phenomenon known as antimicrobial drug resistance. The development of a new class of antibiotics to address bacterial resistance will require many resources, such as time-consuming effort and high cost associated with commercial risk. Hence, the researchers have adopted a strategic approach to enhance the antibacterial efficacy of existing antibiotics by conjugation or combination of existing antibiotics. A number of peptides have become known as antibacterial, cell-penetrating, or membrane-active agents. Antibiotics-Peptide Conjugates (APCs) are a combination of known antibiotics with a peptide connected through a linker. The rationale is to produce an alternative multifunctional antimicrobial compound that will elicit synergistic antibacterial activities while reducing known shortcomings of antibiotics or peptides, such as cellular penetration, serum instability, cytotoxicity, hemolysis, and instability in high salt conditions. In this review, we overview APCs which are used, as a strategy to combat the menace of multi-drug resistance of bacterial pathogens. Furthermore, we explain the focus area of adopted APC strategies and physicochemical properties data that show how they can be used to improve antibacterial efficacy.

Background: Farnesol is an acyclic sesquiterpene alcohol, endogenously synthesized via the ergosterol pathway. It is a quorum sensing molecule (QSM) that was first discovered in C. albicans, and is involved in the inhibition of hyphae formation. Methods: This review focuses on the comprehensive details of occurrence, chemical/biological synthesis of farnesol and its derivatives, and the factors involved in the regulation of their production. Further, the review also presents their cellular functions and diversified biomedical applications. Results: Large-scale production of farnesol can be achieved using chemical synthesis and metabolic engineering approach. Farnesol is involved in the regulation of various physiological processes including filamentation, biofilm development, drug efflux, and apoptosis, etc. Farnesol and its derivatives/ analogues have also been reported to exhibit anti-biofilm, anti-cancer, anti-tumor and fungicidal properties. The antimicrobial potential of farnesol has been enhanced by synergizing it with known antifungal drugs, and also through nano-formulation(s). Conclusion: Apart from its quorum sensing activity, farnesol can be used as an effective anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory, ant-allergic, anti-cancerous, and anti-obesity agent.

The review describes online resources used for drug discovery and design. Internet resources can be classified into two classes. The first class of resources accumulates information about drugs, drug candidates, compounds, and bioassays. This information is a starting point in drug discovery and design. It is necessary for a training dataset composition. The data found at this step are needed in the search for the rules predicting a biological activity or recognizing active compounds among other molecules. The following databases can be used: ChEMBL, different databases of US National Institutes of Health, DrugBank, PDBind-CN Database, RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB), BRENDA, etc. The second class of Internet resources includes web-portals performing online computations for drug discovery and design. The web-portals perform: 1) modelling of molecular structure such as geometry optimization and molecular docking; 2) online computations of various descriptors, physical-chemical and ADMET properties influencing the bioprocesses occurring in a living organism along the road of the drug therapeutic action; 3) quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) and quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) studies; 4) prognosis of bioactivities of compounds; 5) design of new drug candidates. These are, for example, ChemAxon, ACD/ I-lab, Mcule, OCHEM, eADMET, ChemoSophia, DockingServer, 1-click Docking, MDWeb, DockingServer, ZDOCK, etc. The role of docking online resources for modeling of “ligand-receptor” complexes, prognosis of bioactivities, and drug design is discussed. The review highlights the possibilities of Internet resources for a study of a drug action at the most important stages. A detailed assessment of the advantages of the reviewed Internet resources is done.

Monensin is a lipid-soluble naturally occurring bioactive ionophore produced by Streptomyces spp. Its antimicrobial activity is mediated by its ability to exchange Na+ and K+ ions across the cell membrane thereby disrupting ionic gradients and altering cellular physiology. It is approved by Food and Drug Administration as a veterinary antibiotic to treat coccidiosis. Besides veterinary applications, monensin exhibits a broad spectrum activity against opportunistic pathogens of humans such as bacteria, virus, fungi and parasites in both drug sensitive and resistant strains. This ionophore can selectively kill pathogens with negligible toxic effect on mammalian cells. In this review, we discuss the therapeutic potential of monensin as a new broad-spectrum anti-microbial agent that warrants further studies for clinical use.

Malaria continues to impinge heavily on mankind, with five continents still under its clasp. Widespread and rapid emergence of drug resistance in the Plasmodium parasite to current therapies accentuate the quest for novel drug targets and antimalarial compounds. Plasmodium parasites, maintain a non-photosynthetic relict organelle known as Apicoplast. Among the four major pathways of Apicoplast, biosynthesis of isoprenoids via Methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathway is the only indispensable function of Apicoplast that occurs during different stages of the malaria parasite. Moreover, the human host lacks MEP pathway. MEP pathway is a validated repertoire of novel antimalarial and antibacterial drug targets. Fosmidomycin, an efficacious antimalarial compound against IspC enzyme of MEP pathway is already in clinical trials as a combination drugs. Exploitation of other enzymes of MEP pathway would provide a much-needed impetus to the antimalarial drug discovery programs for the elimination of malaria. We outline the cardinal features of the MEP pathway enzymes and progress made towards the characterization of new inhibitors.