Beyond the discovery void: New targets for antibacterial compounds

Abstract

Antibiotics save many lives, but their efficacy is under threat: overprescription, populationgrowth, and global travel all contribute to the rapid origination and spread of resistantstrains. Exacerbating this threat is the fact that no new major classes of antibioticshave been discovered in the last 30 years: this is the “discovery void.” We discuss thetraditional molecular targets of antibiotics as well as putative novel targets.