New antibiotics from Nature's chemical inventory

Abstract

The doom and gloom of antibiotic resistance dominates public perception of this drug class. Many believe the world has entered the post-antibiotic era. Classic and modern approaches to antibacterial drug discovery have delivered a plethora of lead molecules with a great majority being natural products of ancient microbial origin. The failure of antibiotics in the resistance era comes from an inability to develop new leads into clinical candidates, which is a costly and risky endeavor for any therapeutic area, especially when resistance is at play. The world needs new antibiotic molecules to replace the exhausted pipeline and the second 'golden era' is certain to come from Nature's chemical inventory once again.

Keywords: Antibiotics; Biosynthesis; Drug discovery; Essential genes; Genome mining; Metabolomics; Natural products; Resistance; Smart screens.