About
New therapeutic strategies are needed to combat the pandemics and the spread of multidrug resistant form of tuberculosis. This collaborative project between our group and Institut Pasteur of Korea aims to decipher the molecular interaction of promising new antituberculosis clinical compounds and their bacterial target. Using an original and efficient method of phenotypic high-content screening IP-Korea team has identified new compounds which block Mycobacterium tuberculosis growth at low concentrations. All of these drugs target the cytochrome bc1 complex, which is an essential component of the electron transport chain required to produce energy for bacterial metabolism. NMR is used to analyse the mechanism of the drug-target interaction at the atomic scale within whole live Mycobacterium cells using the innovative so called “in-cell” NMR method. The detailed information obtained by this study will orient drug synthesis and development of efficient therapeutic strategies.
