Pharmaceutical Chemistry

Multidrug Resistance

Huge amounts of antibiotics are being used around the globe for human therapies, growing farm animals and even in aquaculture, resulting in the selection of pathogenic bacteria resistant to multiple drugs. Multidrug resistance in microbes may be generated by one of two mechanisms. First, these microbes may accumulate multiple genes, each coding for resistance to a single drug, within a single cell. This accumulation occurs typically on resistance (R) plasmids. Second, multidrug resistance may also occur by the increased expression of genes that code for multidrug efflux pumps, extruding a wide range of drugs. This conference discusses our existing knowledge on the molecular mechanisms involved in multiple types of resistances offered by these microbes. An even more serious threat may be the emergence of gram-negative pathogens that are resistant to essentially all of the available agents. Researchers had time to react against the threat by MRSA. Thus, there are newly developed agents that are active against vancomycin-resistant MRSA, such as linezolid and quinupristin/dalfopristin. However, the emergence of “pan-resistant” gram-negative strains, notably those belonging to the family of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumanii, occurred more recently, after most major pharmaceutical companies stopped the development of new antibacterial agents. The time will not be far where we will be running out of compounds used to treat basic diseases.

Subtracks

1. Mutational Alteration of the Target Protein
2. Enzymatic Inactivation of the Drug
3. Acquisition of Genes for Less Susceptible Target Proteins from Other Species
4. Bypassing of the Target