Discovery of Novel Antibiotics, 2nd Edition

A special issue of Antibiotics (ISSN 2079-6382).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2025) | Viewed by 609

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Chemical Engineering, ISEL—Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: biomarkers discovery; drugs discovery; metabolomics; FTIR spectroscopy; diagnostic; prognosis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The first edition of the Special Issue “Discovery of Novel Antibiotics” was published in 2021. It is a successful collection with four excellent papers and has encouraged us to open a second edition on the same topic.

As a continuation of the first Special Issue, this second edition aims to present the current challenges and solutions in the development of novel antibiotics. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Strategies based on medicinal chemistry;
  • Semi-synthetic and synthetic products;
  • Target-based drug discovery;
  • Combinatorial biosynthesis;
  • Screening of natural compounds;
  • New screening methods;
  • Novel cultivation methods for previously “unculturable” bacteria;
  • Phage therapy.

Dr. Cecília R.C. Calado
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Antibiotics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • antibiotics discovery
  • drugs screening
  • antibiotics resistance
  • antimicrobial resistance
  • systems biology
  • gene variant

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Related Special Issue

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

11 pages, 3841 KiB  
Review
Targeting Gene Transcription Prevents Antibiotic Resistance
by Paul F. Agris
Antibiotics 2025, 14(4), 345; https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics14040345 - 27 Mar 2025
Viewed by 364
Abstract
Innovative strategies are needed to curb the global health challenge of antibiotic resistance. The World Health Organization predicts that antibiotic resistance could lead to millions of deaths annually. Pharmaceutical experience has shown that modest alterations of commonly-used broad-spectrum antibiotics readily elicit resistant strains. [...] Read more.
Innovative strategies are needed to curb the global health challenge of antibiotic resistance. The World Health Organization predicts that antibiotic resistance could lead to millions of deaths annually. Pharmaceutical experience has shown that modest alterations of commonly-used broad-spectrum antibiotics readily elicit resistant strains. Thus, continued simple iterative improvements on current antibiotics are not sustainable. Traditional strategies target single sites with the goal of a broad-spectrum antibiotic. In comparison, a novel strategy targets multiple sites in single- or multidrug-resistant Gram-positive bacterial pathogens. The objective is to exploit the mechanisms by which pathogenic bacteria require genes for transcriptional regulation. Transcription regulatory factors can be manipulated and their functions disrupted to hamper bacterial viability. Some transcription factors regulate one or more steps in metabolic pathways. Transcription factors are not always proteins; some are small-molecule metabolites triggering genetic functions through riboswitches, and others are RNAs. Novel agents have been discovered with computer-simulated docking to an unusual transcription regulatory site in nascent bacterial mRNA. These compounds exhibit innovative chemistries and modes of action that inhibit bacterial growth by binding to and blocking critical Gram-positive mRNA functions. The tRNA-dependent transcription regulation of amino acid metabolism illustrates the possibilities of novel strategies to inhibit antibiotic-resistant growth and thwart the emergence of novel resistant strains. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Discovery of Novel Antibiotics, 2nd Edition)
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