Department of Biomedical Sciences, Cardiff School of Health Sciences, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Western Avenue, Llandaff, Wales, CF5 2YB.
Microbiol Spectr. 2016 Apr;4(2). doi: 10.1128/microbiolspec.VMBF-0018-2015.
Antibiotics are undoubtedly a pillar of modern medicine; their discovery in 1929 revolutionized the fight against infectious disease, instigating a worldwide decline in infection-associated mortality. Throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s the golden age of antibiotic discovery was underway with numerous new classes of antibiotics identified and brought to market. By 1962 all of our currently known families of antibiotics had been discovered, and it was a widely held belief, that humanity had conquered infectious disease. Despite varying bacterial cellular targets, most antibiotics targeted exponentially multiplying bacteria by interfering with integral processes such as peptidoglycan synthesis or ribosomal activity. The very nature of this targeted approach has driven the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.Methods of antibiotic identification relied solely on scientific observation, and while chemical analogues such as amoxicillin, derived from penicillin, continued to be developed, they retained the same mechanisms of action and hence the same bacterial targets. This article describes and discusses some of the emerging novel targets for antimicrobial treatments, highlighting pivotal research on which our ability to continue to successfully treat bacterial infection relies.
抗生素无疑是现代医学的基石；1929 年抗生素的发现彻底改变了抗感染治疗，使全球因感染而导致的死亡率显著下降。在整个 20 世纪 30 年代、40 年代和 50 年代，抗生素的发现进入了黄金时代，发现了许多新类别的抗生素并推向市场。到 1962 年，我们目前已知的所有抗生素家族都已被发现，人们普遍认为人类已经征服了传染病。尽管细菌的细胞靶标各不相同，但大多数抗生素通过干扰肽聚糖合成或核糖体活性等基本过程来靶向指数增殖的细菌。这种靶向方法的本质导致了抗生素耐药菌的出现。抗生素的鉴定方法仅依赖于科学观察，虽然像阿莫西林这样从青霉素衍生而来的化学类似物仍在不断开发，但它们保留了相同的作用机制，因此针对的仍是相同的细菌靶标。本文描述并讨论了一些用于抗菌治疗的新兴新靶标，强调了我们继续成功治疗细菌感染所依赖的关键研究。
