2014/07/02 by Peter M. Wright, Ian B. Seiple, Andrew G. Myers · 2 citations
Medicine · Chemistry · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Microbial Natural Products and Biosynthesis #Synthesis and Catalytic Reactions #Antibiotic Resistance in Bacteria
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/anie.201310843
openalex publication_date 2014/07/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The discovery and implementation of antibiotics in the early twentieth century transformed human health and wellbeing. Chemical synthesis enabled the development of the first antibacterial substances, organoarsenicals and sulfa drugs, but these were soon outshone by a host of more powerful and vastly more complex antibiotics from nature: penicillin, streptomycin, tetracycline, and erythromycin, among others. These primary defences are now significantly less effective as an unavoidable consequence of rapid evolution of resistance within pathogenic bacteria, made worse by widespread misuse of antibiotics. For decades medicinal chemists replenished the arsenal of antibiotics by semisynthetic and to a lesser degree fully synthetic routes, but economic factors have led to a subsidence of this effort, which places society on the precipice of a disaster. We believe that the strategic application of modern chemical synthesis to antibacterial drug discovery must play a critical role if a crisis of global proportions is to be averted.