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Antibacterial drugs

New antibiotic on the horizon?

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 5, page 539 (2006)Cite this article

Platensimycin looks to be a promising first step towards a new first-in-class antibacterial drug.

A pathway yet to be fully exploited for antibiotic drug discovery is fatty acid biosynthesis. A key enzyme involved in this pathway is the β-ketoacyl-acyl carrier protein synthase FabF. To increase the chance of identifying a compound that selectively targets FabF, the authors engineered the Gram-positive pathogen Staphylococcus aureus to express antisense RNA against FabF. This renders the bacteria more sensitive to inhibitors of this enzyme, and so comparison of growth inhibition of the wild-type strain with that of the antisense strain enables the identification of genuine FabF-selective inhibitors present in the fermentation samples. This screen identified a potent antibiotic, platensimycin, which could otherwise have been overlooked in a conventional screening assay.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Wang, J. et al. Platensimycin is a selective FabF inhibitor with potent antibiotic properties. Nature 441, 358–361 (2006)

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Authors
  1. Samantha Barton
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Barton, S. New antibiotic on the horizon?. Nat Rev Drug Discov 5, 539 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd2098

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd2098

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