Next-generation Precision Antimicrobials: Towards Personalized Treatment of Infectious Diseases

Overview

Journal Curr Opin Microbiol

Specialty Microbiology

Date 2017 Jun 18

PMID 28623720

Citations 48

Authors

Cesar de la Fuente-Nunez

Marcelo Dt Torres

Francisco Jm Mojica

Timothy K Lu

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Antibiotics started to be used almost 90 years ago to eradicate life-threatening infections. The urgency of the problem required rapid, broad-spectrum elimination of infectious agents. Since their initial discovery, these antimicrobials have saved millions of lives. However, they are not exempt from side effects, which include the indiscriminate disruption of the beneficial microbiota. Recent technological advances have enabled the development of antimicrobials that can selectively target a gene, a cellular process, or a microbe of choice. These strategies bring us a step closer to developing personalized therapies that exclusively remove disease-causing infectious agents. Here, we advocate the preservation of our beneficial microbes and provide an overview of promising alternatives to broad-spectrum antimicrobials. Specifically, we emphasize nucleic acid and peptide-based systems as a foundation for next-generation alternatives to antibiotics that do not challenge our microbiota and may help to mitigate the spread of resistance.

Citing Articles

Generative latent diffusion language modeling yields anti-infective synthetic peptides.

Torres M, Chen T, Wan F, Chatterjee P, de la Fuente-Nunez C bioRxiv. 2025; .

PMID: 39975107 PMC: 11838489. DOI: 10.1101/2025.01.31.636003.

Venomics AI: a computational exploration of global venoms for antibiotic discovery.

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PMID: 39764027 PMC: 11702808. DOI: 10.1101/2024.12.17.628923.

Discovery of antibiotics in the archaeome using deep learning.

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PMID: 39605719 PMC: 11601303. DOI: 10.1101/2024.11.15.623859.

Editorial: design considerations for future personalized vaccination approaches.

Rahman M Nanomedicine (Lond). 2024; 20(4):329-334.

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Novel Drug-like HsrA Inhibitors Exhibit Potent Narrow-Spectrum Antimicrobial Activities against .

Casado J, Olivan-Muro I, Algarate S, Chueca E, Salillas S, Velazquez-Campoy A Int J Mol Sci. 2024; 25(18).

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