Evolution of Antimicrobial Resistance and Balancing Antibiotics with Other Treatment Concepts

Dear Colleague,

The emergence of multi-resistant bacteria is a global threat to public health, as declared by the WHO, which established its importance and urges measures for its control. The inappropriate use of antibiotics in humans and animals has led to the appearance of multiresistance that is difficult to control. Instead of new antibiotics, novel strategies have been proposed to fight bacterial pathogens, among which combinatorial therapy and the use of adjuvants. These adjuvants can include drugs used in clinical practice, such as monoclonal antibodies, beta-lactamase inhibitors, efflux pump inhibitors, or modulators of bacterial membrane potential. Virulence inhibitors, which, without causing selection pressure, can block virulence factors such as exotoxins and the ability to produce biofilm or can inhibit the mechanisms that control quorum sensing, are also being tested. There is a need for reprofiling or repositioning in drug development to allow new pharmacological uses of known drugs, different from their previous medical indications. Therefore, there is enormous interest in screening for drugs that may have anti-virulence effects. In this context, it is necessary to increase our knowledge to develop new antimicrobial treatment strategies.

The alternative use of molecules and strategies different from conventional antibiotics and treatments is exactly within the scope of Antibiotics and includes the search for new data and innovative approaches against multi-resistant bacteria. Although it may seem like a syntactic paradox, “non-antibiotics” are of enormous interest to scientific researchers in antibiotics.

Dr. Manuel Antonio Rodríguez-Iglesias
Guest Editor

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• non-antibiotics
• drug repositioning
• antimicrobials
• drug synergy
• antibiotic resistance
• biomimetic