Scientists turn toxic pesticide into treatment against antibiotic-resistant bacteria

N-Aryl-C-nitroazoles are an important class of heterocyclic compounds. They are used as pesticides and fungicides. However, these substances could be toxic to humans and cause mutations.

As they are not frequently used, there is little data about them in the medicinal chemistry literature. However, it has been suggested recently that the groups of compounds that are traditionally avoided can help to fight pathogenic bacteria.

The compound OTB-021 was found to work well against drug-sensitive strains of tuberculosis pathogens, but was powerless against strains of pathogens that belong to the so-called ESKAPE panel. ESKAPE is an abbreviation for the names of bacterial species most often developing resistance to antibiotics: Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter aerogenes. It is a kind of a pun: 'eskape' sounds like 'escape,' and the bacteria of this panel are known to be resistant to most of the known antibiotics – that is, they seem to 'escape' from drugs.

The sensitivity of microorganisms to a new compound was tested via disk diffusion method. Zones of the inhibition of bacterial growth by antibiotic disks and dried solution of the compound in Petri dishes were measured. It turned out that the ESKAPE bacteria were easily suppressed by the new substances.