Drug Discovery for MDR

Infections caused by MDR (Multi-drug resistant) strains are increasing with time due to the selection pressure posed by the use of antibiotics. The mechanisms that confer antibiotic resistance to bacteria are gene mutation, change in cell envelop, over expression of efflux pumps and biofilm formation. Drug development for MDR has become one of the major challenges globally. MDR infections associated with health care facilities are difficult to treat due to the limited therapeutic approaches or even no treatment options. Therefore, there is an emergency to develop new therapeutic approaches against MDR pathogens. It is possible to identify proteins that are responsible for the survival of pathogenic MDR bacteria for the purpose of drug discovery. Rational-structure based drug design is an inventive process of finding new drug targets, which relies on the knowledge of three-dimensional structure of biological targets. The three-dimension structure is obtained by high throughput techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Cryo-electron microscopy (Cryo- EM). Structure biology plays an important role in the characterization of new therapeutic targets and assessment of drug targets. Computational methods boost drug development and discovery process against MDR pathogens and analyse efficient therapies.

Keywords: Antibiotic resistance, Cryo-EM, Drug discovery, Multidrug resistance, NMR, Rational structure based drug design, Structure biology, X-ray diffraction.