Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2010, 221(2)

Review

Development of New Anti-tuberculosis Drug Candidates

RUIRU SHI¹ and ISAMU SUGAWARA²

¹International Tuberculosis Research Department, Henan Provincial Public Health Clinical Center and Henan Provincial Chest Hospital, Henan, China
2 The Research Institute of Tuberculosis, Tokyo, Japan

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, is a tenacious and remarkably successful pathogen that has latently infected one third of the world's population, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) statistics. It is anticipated that 10% of these infected individuals will develop active tuberculosis at some point in their lifetime. The long-term use of the current drug regimen, the emergence of drug-resistant strains, and HIV co-infection have resulted in a resurgence of research efforts to address the urgent need for new anti-tuberculosis drugs. A number of potential candidate drugs with novel modes of action have entered clinical trials in recent years, and these are likely to be effective against anti-tuberculosis drug-resistant strains. They include neuroquinolone derivatives, a modified ethambutol, nitro-imidazole groups and so on. This mini-review summarizes the latest information about eight new anti-tuberculosis drug candidates and describes their activities, pharmacokinetics, mechanisms of action, and mechanisms of drug-resistance induced by these drug candidates.

keywords —— anti-tuberculosis drug candidates; M. tuberculosis; mechanism of action; multi-drug resistance; XDR-TB

© 2010 Tohoku University Medical Press

===============================

Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2010, 221, 97-106

Correspondence: Isamu Sugawara, M.D., Ph.D., The Research Institute of Tuberculosis, 3-1-24 Matsuyama, Kiyose, Tokyo 204-0022, Japan.

e-mail: s6671112@sea.plala.or.jp