Novel Targets Against Helicobacter Pylori : A Bioinformatic Approach

Abstract

Evaluation of: Duckworth M, Menard A, Megraud F, Mendz GL: Bioinformatic analysis of Helicobacter pylori XGPRTase: a potential therapeutic target.Helicobacter 11, 287–295 (2006). Helicobacter pylori is a globally spread pathogen, with roughly 50% of the human population being contaminated. It causes severe gastrointestinal diseases, such as chronic gastritis, peptic ulcers and gastric cancer, which lead to significant morbidity and mortality. Much effort is dedicated by scientists to design alternative strategies to treat this infection, due to the widespread emergence of resistance to the presently used pharmacological agents. The xanthine–guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (XGPRTase) enzyme of H. pylori may be one of these targets, as the enzyme was recently purified, characterized and shown to be essential to the life cycle of the parasite. Duckworth and colleagues used a bioinformatic approach to investigate this target. The parasite enzyme has been compared with those present in various bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes, and its main features have been deduced by using conserved domain analysis, multiple sequence alignment and phylognetic analysis, as well as protein 3D modeling. However, significant findings did not emerge after this work for the design of XGPRTase inhibitors.