Department of Immunology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
Curr Drug Targets. 2012 Mar;13(3):338-51. doi: 10.2174/138945012799424642.
Type III Secretion Systems (T3SSs) are highly organized multi-protein nanomachines which translocate effector proteins from the bacterial cytosol directly into host cells. These systems are required for the pathogenesis of a wide array of Gram-negative bacterial pathogens, and thus have attracted attention as potential antibacterial drug targets. A decade of research has enabled the identification of natural products, conventional small molecule drug-like structures, and proteins that inhibit T3SSs. The mechanism(s) of action and molecular target(s) of the majority of these inhibitors remain to be determined. At the same time, structural biology methods are providing an increasingly detailed picture of the functional arrangement of the T3SS component proteins. The confluence of these two research areas may ultimately identify non-classical drug targets and facilitate the development of novel therapeutics.
III 型分泌系统（T3SS）是高度组织化的多蛋白纳米机器，可将效应蛋白从细菌细胞质直接转运到宿主细胞中。这些系统是多种革兰氏阴性细菌病原体发病机制所必需的，因此作为潜在的抗菌药物靶点引起了人们的关注。十年来的研究使人们能够识别天然产物、传统的小分子类似药物结构和抑制 T3SS 的蛋白质。这些抑制剂的大多数作用机制和分子靶标仍有待确定。与此同时，结构生物学方法正在为 T3SS 组成蛋白的功能排列提供越来越详细的图片。这两个研究领域的融合可能最终确定非经典的药物靶标，并促进新型治疗药物的开发。
