About this Research Topic
The life expectancy of billion people worldwide dramatically changed since the introduction of the first antibiotics in 40s. After the “golden era” of antibiotics, physicians and researchers are now disenchanted in front of widespread diffusion of drug resistance worldwide. The rise of multi-drug resistant (MDR) microorganisms such as the ESKAPE pathogens (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species), has dramatically limited the number of potentially effective antibiotics and forced the medical community to exhume old antimicrobial drugs, often burdened by high toxicity. The latter, is highly suggestive of the difficulties of introducing novel effective antibacterial drugs into the clinical practice characterized by low toxicity and featuring tailored activity even against MDR. Several possible bacterial targets have been identified, but only an extremely limited number of new molecules have reached the clinics in the last decade.
Structure-based drug design has found much more space in Medical Virology, such as for example in the case of the recently introduced Direct Acting Antivirals (DAA) against the highly variable hepatitis C virus (HCV). In this case, given the impossibility of easily culturing HCV in vitro, a dramatic leap forward was possible after the structural characterization of discrete HCV proteins to be targeted by the new drugs.
The main purpose of this Research Topic is to collect and join original experimental articles and reviews, summarizing and even increasing the current state of the art in the field of anti-infectious agent drug-development through the characterization of discrete structure of bacteria or viruses with therapeutic perspectives.
We will welcome renowned scientists to investigate on novel potential therapeutic microbial target as well as on the characterization of interaction between anti-bacterial or antivirals and their respective molecular target and, further to explore, even in silico, novel models for elucidating the dynamic interactions between bacterial/viral proteins and the human host.
A volume of new works focused on this wide topic would be novel, and original experimental papers and review articles summarizing the associations between structural characterization of microbial structures and/or protein-protein supramolecular interactions and design of novel antimicrobial drugs would be of wide-ranging interest to the audience of Frontiers in Pharmacology.
Structure-based drug design has found much more space in Medical Virology, such as for example in the case of the recently introduced Direct Acting Antivirals (DAA) against the highly variable hepatitis C virus (HCV). In this case, given the impossibility of easily culturing HCV in vitro, a dramatic leap forward was possible after the structural characterization of discrete HCV proteins to be targeted by the new drugs.
The main purpose of this Research Topic is to collect and join original experimental articles and reviews, summarizing and even increasing the current state of the art in the field of anti-infectious agent drug-development through the characterization of discrete structure of bacteria or viruses with therapeutic perspectives.
We will welcome renowned scientists to investigate on novel potential therapeutic microbial target as well as on the characterization of interaction between anti-bacterial or antivirals and their respective molecular target and, further to explore, even in silico, novel models for elucidating the dynamic interactions between bacterial/viral proteins and the human host.
A volume of new works focused on this wide topic would be novel, and original experimental papers and review articles summarizing the associations between structural characterization of microbial structures and/or protein-protein supramolecular interactions and design of novel antimicrobial drugs would be of wide-ranging interest to the audience of Frontiers in Pharmacology.
Keywords: Protein-structure, in silico modelling, anti-microbial activity, drug discovery, molecular characterization
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
