Strategies for identifying new antimicrobial targets

Abstract

The increasing number of human pathogens resistant to existing classes of antibiotics has made the identification of novel antimicrobial agents a matter of urgency. The fact that no new class of broad spectrum antibiotics has been developed since the 1970s highlights the symptom that the majority of current antibiotics have been targeted against a limited number of bacterial cellular processes. These can be generally classed as inhibitors targeted against cell wall biosynthesis, DNA/RNA replication, protein synthesis or specific biochemical bottlenecks.