94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Experimental Pharmacology and Drug Discovery
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1542729
This article is part of the Research Topic Insights in Experimental Pharmacology and Drug Discovery: 2024 View all 6 articles
Innovative application of mefloquine and methacycline in combating Tet(X3/X4)-positive Escherichia coli infections
Provisionally accepted- 1 Ningxia University, Yinchuan, China
- 2 Jilin University, Changchun, Hebei Province, China
The advent and global spread of plasmid-carried resistance genes, including the tigecycline resistance gene tet(X3/X4) and the colistin resistance gene mcr-1, present a substantial threat to public health that requires immediate resolution. This study successfully screened and identified commercial anti-parasitic drugs that efficiently inhibit Tet(X4) enzyme activity (IC50 = 79.42 μg/mL), revealing that mefloquine exhibited a synergistic antibacterial effect with tetracyclines against tet(X3/X4)-positive bacteria (FIC<0.5) and an additive effect with tetracyclines against tet(X3/X4)-negative bacteria (0.5
Keywords: Mefloquine, Methacycline, tet(X4), synergistic effect, Escherichia coli
Received: 10 Dec 2024; Accepted: 28 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou, Zhou and Xue. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yonglin Zhou, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.