Antimicrobial Drug Discovery: Emerging Strategies

Drug resistance is increasing among a variety of human pathogenic microorganisms such as Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumaniii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacter spp. (currently dubbed the ‘ESKAPE’ pathogens), and has emerged as one of the most important clinical challenges of this century. Increased general awareness and fear of these pathogens means there is a growing demand for research to tackle the threat of multidrug resistance. Documenting the latest research in the field, this book discusses current and promising activities to discover new antimicrobials in five key areas: molecular genetics and systems microbiology; synthetic, computational chemistry and chemoinformatics; High Throughput Screening (HTS); non-vertebrate model hosts; and light- and nano-based technologies.