ANTIBIOCLICKS SIGNED

Project "ANTIBIOCLICKS" data sheet

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 Project objective

The frightening increase in antibiotic drug resistance is threatening global healthcare as we know it. To this extent the World Health Organisation that has classes M. tuberculosis and Gram-negative nosocomial infections as the highest priority for novel R&D strategies. A major obstacle to drug discovery programs is to design inhibitors that can efficiently enter into bacteria. One such stealth strategy is exemplified by natural siderophore-antibiotics conjugates (sideromycins) that piggyback the bacterial iron acquisition machinery to enter bacteria. This Trojan-horse strategy has inspired the chemical synthesis of numerous sideromycin conjugates, with cefiderocol a current preclinical candidate. Despite the advances in this field, natural examples of sideromycins are still scarce, and finding new examples may provide further insight into siderophore antibiotic formation and delivery.

ANTIBIOCLICKS will investigate a unique bioinspired conjugation chemistry that has been uncovered from a newly discovered natural sideromycin. This natural “click” chemistry is ideal for the coupling of catecholate containing siderophores (such as those of the WHO prioritised M. tuberculosis, A. baumannii, E. coli, P. aeruginosa and K. pneumonia) to antibiotics or other molecules. This project will aim to define the exact chemical mechanism behind this novel and surprisingly simple conjugation reaction, and use this unique and facile chemistry to generate a combinatorial library of siderophores with antibiotics and fluorophores. These products will subsequently be used to probe the exact mechanism of bacterial sideromycin uptake, potential intracellular decoupling and target engagement. Finally, the antibiotic and diagnostic potential of the generated siderophore conjugates will be evaluated. To this extent, ANTIBIOCLICKS will provide illuminating insight into new bioinspired conjugation chemistry, and evaluate its potential for novel bacterial therapeutics and diagnostics.