Anti-Infective Agents in Medicinal Chemistry (Formerly Current Medicinal Chemistry - Anti-Infective Agents) - Volume 8, Issue 4, 2009

Every year the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) meets in the Fall, to chronicle and describe the state-of-the-art in infectious diseases and chemotherapy, with the hope of highlighting new agents that look promising to treat Mankind's most dreaded pathogens. Unfortunately, this year fewer new agents are being described, although the clinicians will be out in full force, looking for ag Read More

Bacterial biofilms on medical devices are a primary source of infection, and efforts have been made to develop means of decontaminating colonized devices including hemodialysis catheter “lock” solutions. Because bacterial biofilms are inherently resistant to many antibiotics and widespread use of antibiotics contributes to resistance development, there is a need for new approaches to biofilm eradication. We hav Read More

Bacterial biofilms are defined as a surface attached community of microorganisms that are protected by an extracellular matrix of biomolecules. Within a biofilm state, bacteria are more resistant to antibiotics and are inherently insensitive to antiseptics and basic host immune responses. The NIH has estimated that 65-80% of all microbial infections are biofilm-based. Biofilm infections of indwelling medical devices are also of Read More

Bacteria rely on chemical communication or quorum sensing to coordinate activities necessary for their survival in colonies. Among the numerous processes mediated by this intercellular communication is the formation of biofilms. The prevalence of biofilms in many different environments can be problematic. Their association to infectious diseases and their inherent ability increase antibiotic resistance in bacteria has led to a gr Read More

The antimicrobial peptides represent diverse structures for drug design. They have been looked at as potential sources of new antimicrobial drugs to combat the increasing threat posed by multiple drug resistant microorganisms. Unfortunately, peptides themselves provide inferior drug candidates because of their low oral bioavailability, potential immunogenicity, poor in vivo metabolic stability, high molecular weight and Read More

The therapy of parasitic diseases has relied, until recently, on the use of a very limited number of drugs, most of them of low efficacy, leading to side effects and in certain cases with high toxicity. This review focuses on the chemotherapy to treat diseases caused by Trypanosoma cruzi (Chagas' disease), Trypanosoma b. gambiense and Trypanosoma b. rhodesiense (sleeping sickness), Plasmodium (malaria) and Leishma Read More

Polymyxin B (PMB) belongs to a class of antibiotics discovered more than six decades ago. PMB was used for various bacterial infection threatening, in particular to sepsis. Its use, however, was abandoned because of the observation of severe side effects. In the last years this view changed due to the appearance of multi-drug resistant Gram-negative pathogens, which were resistant to most available antibiotics, leading to a re-e Read More