Background

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest global issues facing medicine currently. The effect of antibiotic resistance is inherently indiscriminate, with the potential to affect a person of any gender, age or nationality.

Technology Overview

Researchers at the University of York have developed a novel means of getting antibiotics into bacteria. It exploits the active uptake of an antibiotic-boosting catalyst into the bacterial cell. The catalyst is designed to convert a masked prodrug, which has itself no biological activity to its active form once it has reached its bacterial target. The targeting group is a compound utilised by bacteria for the uptake of essential iron. The idea is to link the catalyst to the targeting group for active accumulation by the bacterial cell. Human cells will remain unaffected since they do not import the bacterial targeting group. In addition, the chosen catalyst is a synthetic compound that allows for an activation reaction that has no equivalent in biology. Hence, the prodrugs cannot be activated in the cells of the human host ().

Benefits

The approach would extend the clinical lifetime of existing antibiotics
Reduction in the side effects usually associated with antibiotics
The method would avoid the possibility of the development of antibiotic resistance

Applications

This strategy has the potential to be developed into a platform technology applicable to:

A variety of antimicrobial drugs
A range of catalysts designed for prodrug activation chemistry
Siderophores selected for pathogen specificity
Reviving antibiotics that have been abandoned in the past because of toxicity issues
Anti-cancer drugs with high cytotoxicity accessible to antimicrobial therapy

Opportunity

The University of York is searching for licensing opportunities and collaborative research partners.

Artificial Enzymes for Selective Antibiotic Activation

Seeking