Marine Antibiotics 2022

Dear Colleagues,

Nowadays, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is expected to be one of the leading causes of death in the world in 2050 and, therefore, is considered as one of the most serious threats to global public health. It is clear that the renewal of the therapeutic arsenal is a major priority, if only to treat patients. However, despite considerable international efforts to tackle AMR, only 11 new antibiotics have been approved since July 2017. Obviously, the “2020 antibacterial agents in clinical and preclinical development” report from the WHO recently concludes that “Overall, the clinical pipeline and recently approved antibiotics are insufficient to tackle the challenge of increasing emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance”.

In 2020, the preclinical antibacterial pipeline was made of 292 diverse antibacterial agents categorized in antimicrobial peptides (n = 29), vaccines (n = 47), non-traditional approaches (category comprising antibodies, bacteriophages, microbiome modulating agents, antivirulence agents, n = 101), and finally the direct-acting small molecules (n = 115). Interestingly, micro- and small-sized enterprises are the main developers (113 antibacterial agents), while only 29 preclinical agents are developed by medium and large enterprises. With the rate of success being very low, the antibiotic discovery has to be reinvigorated. The marine biodiversity is still an under-explored reservoir of bioactive compounds and it must play its full role in the race against time to design potent and effective drugs to tackle AMR.

The first Special Issue dedicated to marine antibiotics was managed by Prof. Sergey Zotchev in 2012. It assembled 11 papers, which have collected according to the Web of Science, to date, 328 citations. After the six articles compiled in the second Special Issue named “Marine Antibiotics 2020”, this third opus, “Marine Antibiotics 2022”, is now open to aggregate innovative data regarding marine antibiotics, whatever their origin (archaebacteria, eubacteria, algae, animals, or even metagenomic data mining), biosynthesis pathway, chemical nature (PKS, NRPS, peptides, alkaloids, etc.), or mechanisms of actions, whatever the target (biofilm, virulence, Quorum sensing). Original research, as well as review articles, is welcome. Scientists are invited to contribute in order to combine expertise in (meta)data mining, microbiology, biochemistry, biotechnology, cellular biology, and medicine.

Dr. Yannick Fleury
Guest Editor

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