A Search For Antibacterial Agents

This book contains precisely referenced chapters, emphasizing antibacterial agents with clinical practicality and alternatives to synthetic antibacterial agents through detailed reviews of diseases and their control using alternative approaches. The book aims at explaining bacterial diseases and their control via synthetic drugs replaced by chemicals obtained from different natural resources which present a future direction in the pharmaceutical industry. The book attempts to present emerging low cost and environmentally friendly drugs that are free from side effects studied in the overlapping disciplines of medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology and pharmacology.

New drugs are frequently entering into the market along with the existing drugs. The antibacterial agents can be discussed in five major classes, i.e. classification based on the type of action, source, spectrum of activity, chemical structure and function. Resistance of bacteria to antibiotics is an urgent problem of the humanity, which leads us to the lack of therapy for serious bacterial infections. Development of new antibiotics has almost ceased in the last decades - even when a new antibiotic is launched, very soon the resistance of bacteria appears. Industrial textiles exposed as awnings, screens, tents; upholstery used in large public areas such as hospitals, hotels and stations; fabrics for transports; protective clothing and personal protective equipment; bed sheets and blankets; textiles left wet between processing steps; intimate apparel, underwear, socks and sportswear, disinfection of air and water for white rooms, hospitals and operating theatres, food and pharma industries, water depuration, drinkable water supplying and air conditioning systems. Many clinicians recommend alternative approaches to using antimicrobial substances. Moreover, the majority of bioagents demonstrate on antibiotics for treatment of a wide range of diseases in human sectors. However, the misuse and mishandling of drugs lead to microbial, particularly bacterial, resistance as well as result in the difficulty of treating microbial diseases. Hence, the proposed book will give more precise information on novel antibacterial compound(s).

Antibacterial agents act against bacterial infection either by killing the bacterium or by arresting its growth. They do this by targeting bacterial DNA and its associated processes, attacking bacterial metabolic processes including protein synthesis, or interfering with bacterial cell wall synthesis and function. Antibacterial Agents is an essential guide to this important class of chemotherapeutic drugs. Compounds are organised according to their target, which helps the reader understand the mechanism of action of these drugs and how resistance can arise. The book uses an integrated “lab-to-clinic” approach which covers drug discovery, source or synthesis, mode of action, mechanisms of resistance, clinical aspects (including links to current guidelines, significant drug interactions, cautions and contraindications), prodrugs and future improvements. Agents covered include: agents targeting DNA - quinolone, rifamycin, and nitroimidazole antibacterial agents agents targeting metabolic processes - sulfonamide antibacterial agents and trimethoprim agents targeting protein synthesis - aminoglycoside, macrolide and tetracycline antibiotics, chloramphenicol, and oxazolidinones agents targeting cell wall synthesis - β-Lactam and glycopeptide antibiotics, cycloserine, isonaizid, and daptomycin Antibacterial Agents will find a place on the bookshelves of students of pharmacy, pharmacology, pharmaceutical sciences, drug design/discovery, and medicinal chemistry, and as a bench reference for pharmacists and pharmaceutical researchers in academia and industry.

This book contains precisely referenced chapters, emphasizing antibacterial agents with clinical practicality and alternatives to synthetic antibacterial agents through detailed reviews of diseases and their control using alternative approaches. The book aims at explaining bacterial diseases and their control via synthetic drugs replaced by chemicals obtained from different natural resources which present a future direction in the pharmaceutical industry. The book attempts to present emerging low cost and environmentally friendly drugs that are free from side effects studied in the overlapping disciplines of medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology and pharmacology.

There is a high demand for antimicrobials for the treatment of new and emerging microbial diseases. In particular, microbes developing multidrug resistance have created a pressing need to search for a new generation of antimicrobial agents, which are effective, safe and can be used for the cure of multidrug-resistant microbial infections. Nano-antimicrobials offer effective solutions for these challenges; the details of these new technologies are presented here. The book includes chapters by an international team of experts. Chemical, physical, electrochemical, photochemical and mechanical methods of synthesis are covered. Moreover, biological synthesis using microbes, an option that is both eco-friendly and economically viable, is presented. The antimicrobial potential of different nanoparticles is also covered, bioactivity mechanisms are elaborated on, and several applications are reviewed in separate sections. Lastly, the toxicology of nano-antimicrobials is briefly assessed.

Over the past 50 years a wide variety of antibacterial substances have been discovered and synthesised, and their use in treating bacterial infection has been spectacularly successful. Today there are several general classes of antibacterial drugs, each having a well established set of uses, and together they form the mainstay of modern antibacterial chemotherapy. In search for new and improved agents, the pharmaceutical researcher needs to be well informed on many topics, including existing agents, their modes of action and pharmacology, and possible synthetic approaches. In this new book the author has brought together a wide range of information on the principal classes of antibacterial agents, and he covers, for each group, their history, mode of action, key structural features, synthesis and bacterial resistance. The result is a compact and concise overview of these very important classes of antibacterial agents.

The rapid advances made in the study of the synthesis, structure and function of biological macromolecules in the last fifteen years have enabled scientists concerned with antimicrobial agents to achieve a considerable measure of understanding of how these substances inhibit cell growth and division. The use of antimicrobial agents as highly specific inhibitors has in turn substantially assisted the investigation of complex biochemical processes. The literature in this field is so extensive however, that we considered an attempt should be made to draw together in an introductory book the more significant studies of recent years. This book, which is in fact based on lecture courses given by us to undergraduates at Liverpool and Manchester Universities, is therefore intended as an introduction to the biochemistry of antimicrobial action for advanced students in many disciplines. We hope that it may also be useful to established scientists who are new to this area of research. The book is concerned with a discussion of medically important antimicrobial compounds and also a number of agents that, although having no medical uses, have proved invaluable as research tools in biochemistry. Our aim has been to present the available information in a simple and readable way, emphasizing the established facts rather than more controversial material. Whenever possible, however, we have indicated the gaps in the present knowledge of the subject where further information is required.