The fallacies of hope: will we discover new antibiotics to combat pathogenic bacteria in time?

doi:10.1111/j.1574-6976.2006.00038.x

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Wiley InterScience

FEMS Microbiology Reviews

Volume 30 Issue 6, Pages 841 - 852

Published Online: 19 Jul 2006

Published on behalf of the Federation of European Microbiological Societies

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The fallacies of hope: will we discover new antibiotics to combat pathogenic bacteria in time?

Miguel Vicente ¹ , John Hodgson ² , Orietta Massidda ³ , Tone Tonjum ⁴ , Birgitta Henriques-Normark ⁵ & Eliora Z. Ron ⁶

¹ Centro Nacional de Biotecnología, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Campus de Cantoblanco, Madrid, Spain; ² Novexel SA. Parc Biocitech, Romainville, France; ³ Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Biomediche, Sez. Microbiologia Medica, Università di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy; ⁴ Center for Molecular Biology and Neuroscience and Institute of Microbiology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; ⁵ Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control and Microbiology and Tumorbiology Center, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; and ⁶ Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Correspondence: Miguel Vicente, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología, CSIC Campus de Cantoblanco, c/Darwin 3, E-28049 Madrid, Spain. Tel.: +34 91 585 46 99; fax: +34 91 585 45 06; e-mail: mvicente@cnb.uam.es

Editor: Ramón Días Orejas

KEYWORDS

antibiotics • antibiotic resistance • drug development • antimicrobial targets • infectious disease • genomics

ABSTRACT

While newly developed technologies have revolutionized the classical approaches to combating infectious diseases, the difficulties associated with developing novel antimicrobials mean that these technologies have not yet been used to introduce new compounds into the market. The new technologies, including genomics and structural biology, open up exciting possibilities for the discovery of antibiotics. However, a substantial effort to pursue research, and moreover to incorporate the results into the production chain, is required in order to bring new antimicrobials to the final user. In the current scenario of emerging diseases and the rapid spread of antibiotic resistance, an active policy to support these requirements is vital. Otherwise, many valuable programmes may never be fully developed for lack of "interest" and funds (private and public). Will we react in time to avoid potential disaster?

Received 14 February 2006; revised 10 May 2006; accepted 25 May 2006.
First published online 19 July 2006.

DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER (DOI)

10.1111/j.1574-6976.2006.00038.x About DOI