Abstract
Concern over the reports of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections in hospitals and in the community has been publicized in the media, accompanied by comments on the risk that we may soon run out of antibiotics as a way to control infectious disease. Infections caused by Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella species, Clostridium difficile, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, and other Enterobacteriaceae species represent a major public health burden. Despite the pharmaceutical sector's lack of interest in the topic in the last decade, microbial natural products continue to represent one of the most interesting sources for discovering and developing novel antibacterials. Research in microbial natural product screening and development is currently benefiting from progress that has been made in other related fields (microbial ecology, analytical chemistry, genomics, molecular biology, and synthetic biology). In this paper, we review how novel and classical approaches can be integrated in the current processes for microbial product screening, fermentation, and strain improvement.
Highlights
Antibacterial therapy has saved millions of lives and considerably reduced the rate of premature death from bacterial infections
Despite the pharmaceutical sector’s lack of interest in addressing the topic in the last decade, microbial products continue to represent one of the most interesting sources for the discovery of novel antibacterials today and research in the field is currently benefiting from progress that has been made in other related fields, fields which have provided a deeper understanding of the microbiome and the development of new tools to foster the discovery of novel compounds
Despite the diverse classes of antibacterials that have been discovered from microbial natural product screening, there is an urgent medical need for novel molecules endowed with novel mechanisms of action to counteract emerging and multiresistant Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens
Summary
Antibacterial therapy has saved millions of lives and considerably reduced the rate of premature death from bacterial infections. Nowadays we are aware that bacterial resistance to all currently used antibiotics has emerged for both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. This threatening situation urgently calls for a concerted international effort among governments, the pharmaceutical industry, biotechnology companies, and the academic world to react and support the development of new antibacterial agents. One example of such initiative effort is the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) call to develop 10 new systemic antibacterial drugs by 2020 [2] by targeting drug development against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. The prophecy of Louis Pasteur will be fulfilled and “microbes will have the last word.”
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