Fighting Antimicrobial Resistance: Innovative Drugs in Antibacterial Research

In the fight against bacterial infections, particularly those caused by multi-resistant pathogens, the need for new antibacterials is undoubted in scientific communities. and is by now also widely perceived by the general population. However, the antibacterial research landscape has changed considerably over the past years. The majority of big pharma companies has left the field and thus, the decline in R&D on antibacterials severely impacts the drug pipeline. In past years, antibacterial research increasingly relies on smaller companies or academic research institutions, which mostly have only limited financial resources, to carry a drug discovery and development process from the beginning and through the clinical phases. This review formulates the requirements for an antibacterial in regard of targeted pathogens and resistance mechanisms. Strategies are shown for the discovery of new antibacterial structures originating from natural sources, chemical synthesis and more recent AI approaches. This is complemented by principles for the computer-aided design of antibacterials and the refinement of a lead structure. The second part of the article comprises a compilation of promising antibacterial molecules classified according to bacterial target areas. Aspects of the origin, the antibacterial spectrum, resistance and the current development status of the presented drug molecules are highlighted.