Multitargeted anti-infective drugs: resilience to resistance in the antimicrobial resistance era

Abstract

The standard drug discovery paradigm of single molecule – single biological target – single biological effect is perhaps particularly unsuitable for anti-infective drug discovery. This is due to the rapid evolution of resistance likely to be observed with single target drugs. Multitargeted anti-infective drugs are likely to be superior due to their lower susceptibility to target-related resistance mechanisms. Strathclyde minor groove binders are a class of compounds which have been developed by adopting the multitargeted anti-infective drugs paradigm, and their effectiveness against a wide range of pathogenic organisms is discussed. The renaming of this class to Strathclyde nucleic acid binders is also presented due to their likely targets including both DNA and RNA.