Abstract
Abstract There has been an increase in the reported cases of tuberculosis, a disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is still currently affecting most of the world’s population, especially in resource-limited countries. The search for novel antitubercular chemotherapeutics from underexplored natural sources is therefore of paramount importance. The renewed interest in studies related to natural products, driven partly by the growing incidence of MDR-TB, has increased the prospects of discovering new antitubercular drug leads. This is because most of the currently available chemotherapeutics such as rifampicin and capreomycin used in the treatment of TB were derived from natural products, which are proven to be an abundant source of novel drugs used to treat many diseases. To meet the global need for novel antibiotics from natural sources, various strategies for high-throughput screening have been designed and implemented. This review highlights the current antitubercular drug discovery strategies from natural sources.
Highlights
Tuberculosis (TB), an infectious bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has afflicted humans since ancient times
TB is becoming the incurable disease it used to be in the past before the discovery of antibiotics due to limited treatment options arising from different levels of resistance including mono-drug resistance, MDR, XDR, Table 1: Characteristics of first-line antituberculosis drugs
The currently available anti-TB drugs are ineffective against the dormant forms of M. tuberculosis and the fact that there was no screening bioassay for chemical molecules that have activity against dormant tubercle bacilli has been an impediment to the development of novel chemotherapeutics against latent TB [92]
Summary
Tuberculosis (TB), an infectious bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has afflicted humans since ancient times. Natural products constitute an important source of novel chemotherapeutics [4,5,6,7]. The research focus was switched to unexplored environments such as arid deserts, hot springs, and other unusual habitats for novel chemotherapeutic compounds against human pathogens [9]. Only a few plants from over 400,000 plant species with proven biological activity have been reported worldwide [13] This makes it imperative to identify the unexplored plants' species for drug discovery research. It is imperative to continue the search for novel natural products derived from plants as well as microbes from underexplored habitats including marine, estuarine, and even deep seas. Researchers have hypothesized that since these microorganisms could grow optimally in such unusual environments, some of these species produce new bioactive compounds, which apart from aiding their survival, could serve as new drugs [15]
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