Antibacterial drugs: New paths to beating bacteria

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 months 5 days (www.nature.com)

The need for new drugs to combat multidrug-resistant bacteria remains pressing. Now, two recent papers published in Science describe novel agents that target different mechanisms to currently approved antibacterials, which may help tackle this challenge.

The first study, by Haydon and colleagues, set out to target bacterial cell division. FtsZ is an essential bacterial protein that undergoes GTP-dependent polymerization to form the Z ring — the site of cell division — promoting the sequential recruitment of additional proteins that are vital to the process

2 comments | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: antibiotic resistance antibacterial targets FtsZ QseC antibiotic-resistant bacteria Z-ring antibacterials multidrug resistance multidrug-resistant bacteria

Gentle approach could cripple drug-resistant bugs

sea-maid submitted, created time 4 months 2 weeks (www.newscientist.com)

Taking a softly, softly approach to wiping out infection might be the way to beat the evolution of drug resistance in bacteria.

This new technique involves blocking the tularaemia bacterium's ability to sense human hormones. Although testing in human subjects is at least five years off, the bacteria's ability to kill mice was "crippled" by the alterations.

1 comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: LED209 antibiotic resistance multidrug resistance antibiotic-resistant bacteria antibiotics biological weapons bioterrorism tularaemia bacteria drug-resistant bacteria

Resistance to drugs responsible for half of deaths from infections

sea-maid submitted, created time 6 months 4 weeks (www.bmj.com)

Multidrug resistant bacteria are responsible for about half of the 37,000 deaths a year in the 27 member states of the European Union that are caused by infections associated with health care, show the preliminary results of research from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Stockholm.

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Drug transporters: recent advances concerning BCRP and tyrosine kinase inhibitors

davidd submitted, created time 10 months 2 days (www.nature.com)

Multidrug resistance is often associated with the (over)expression of drug efflux transporters of the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) protein family. This minireview discusses the role of one selected ABC-transporter family member, the breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP/ABCG2), in the (pre)clinical efficacy of novel experimental anticancer drugs, in particular tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

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Gene Dosage Do Not Upregulate MRP1 Gene Expression in Adult Leukemia Patients

BIOBOSS submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (www.arcmedres.com)

Upregulation of multidrug resistance-associated protein (MRP1) gene has been detected in many in vitro systems and could be the basis of the drug resistance phenotype in vivo. Researchers from National Institute of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnologyfound that the increase in MRP1 gene dosage observed in resistant cell lines is not responsible for the upregulation of MRP1 expression in leukemic patients.

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