Webinar #43 Strategies for the Discovery of Antimicrobial Drugs
Strategies for the Discovery of Antimicrobial Drugs
Dr. Fatma Gizem AVCI
Üsküdar University
18th February 2022, 14:00 (Turkish Time)
Brief summary:
Increased pressure imposed by improper and extensive use of antimicrobial agents has triggered the pace in the development and transmission of bacterial resistance, which is regarded as a worldwide serious health problem. Enzymatic inactivation of the antimicrobials, modification of the target sites, and reducing the intracellular accumulation of antimicrobials by arranging influx/efflux mechanisms are the basic types of resistance mechanisms. The loss in available drug efficacies due to these resistance mechanisms and the decrease in new antimicrobial discovery rates have increased the search for alternative strategies.
This presentation will mainly focus on two different strategies to fight against increasing antimicrobial resistance. The first one is the use of plant-derived substances, which are of utmost importance in the discovery of new antimicrobial agents with their structural diversities and multi-target properties. The second one is understanding the allosteric inhibition of beta-lactamase enzymes, which are the most common resistance mechanisms developed by bacteria against beta-lactam antibiotics.
