As the consequence of an ever-increasing trend toward bacterial antibiotic drug resistance, scientists are compelled to constantly develop a great diversity of mole-cules that can function as potent antibiotics. Using combinatorial library methods, a ...
As the consequence of an ever-increasing trend toward bacterial antibiotic drug resistance, scientists are compelled to constantly develop a great diversity of mole-cules that can function as potent antibiotics. Using combinatorial library methods, a number of potential drugs can be selected from a sizeable pool of antibiotics. The several molecules selected and described herein, which generally inhibit specific enzymatic activities, show promise in medical applications, including inhibitors of metallo- β-lactamase in <i>B. cereus</i> and of acetohydroxyacid synthase in <i>M. tuberculosis</i>. These potential antibiotics evidence different structures than are exhibited by the currently-used inhibitors, thus raising the possibility that an entirely new class of antibiotics has been found. Combinatorial methods may also be utilized to explore inhibitor specificity, as was previously done using both metallo-β-lactamase and acetohydroxyacid synthase. The isolation of these molecules and the exploration of their specificity underlines the importance and potential of combinatorial methods in the discovery of future antibiotics to combat changing bacterial antibiotic resistance.