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Antimicrobials

Dual-mechanism antibiotics

Nature Microbiology volume 5, pages 984–985 (2020)Cite this article

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A dual-mechanism compound with antibacterial activity that targets both folate metabolism and membrane integrity, with a favourable resistance profile in vitro, is identified by screening a small molecule library.

The concept of combination therapies to treat bacterial infections dates back to the early days of the antibiotic era. Two antibiotics are either combined or co-formulated to broaden the spectrum for empiric therapy and achieve synergistic activity. Another option is to covalently link two antibiotics to form a dual-action hybrid compound that has the advantage of being more difficult for bacteria to evolve resistance to1. Now, Martin et al. report in Cell the identification of an antibacterial compound that kills a variety of clinically relevant bacteria, using a small molecule library of about 33,000 compounds2.

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Fig. 1: Dual-mechanism approaches.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Anti-Infective Agents, Vienna, Austria

    Ursula Theuretzbacher

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  1. Ursula Theuretzbacher
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Correspondence to Ursula Theuretzbacher.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Theuretzbacher, U. Dual-mechanism antibiotics. Nat Microbiol 5, 984–985 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-020-0767-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-020-0767-0

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