A rational approach to discovering new persister control agents.

ABSTRACT: Conventional antibiotic drug discovery selects leads based on bacterial growth inhibition. This approach is ineffective against growth-arrested persister cells. When the treatment stops, persister cells revert to normal cells, causing the infection to relapse. To address the challenge of persistent infections, a paradigm shift in antibiotic development is needed to identify new leads that can eradicate dormant cells. Based on our foundational study, we recently proposed a set of principles for developing new persister killing agents. Here, we report the discovery of new leads that are effective against persister cells using a tailored chemoinformatic clustering algorithm based on these principles. We focused on persister penetration using a small compound library that has known antimicrobi

SUBMITTER: Roy S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12406675 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature