178 Targeting “Beta lactamase-C” in development of novel anti-tuberculosis therapeutics

Abstract

Tuberculosis is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of Mycobacterium, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. (Kumar et al., 2007) In addition, co-infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis and HIV (TB/HIV), especially in Africa, and multidrug resistant and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis in all regions, (WHO, 2010) makes it important to develop novel therapeutics against this bacterium. Penicillin like β-Lactam antibiotics are among the most clinically prescribed drugs for anti-bacterial therapeutics. The general mechanism of action involved the inhibition of enzyme d,d-transpeptidases, which takes part in the biosynthesis of the bacterial cell wall (Heesemann, 1993). A major strategy of bacterial resistance to β-lactams is the production of β-lactamases that catalyze the hydrolysis of β-lactams, leading to the inactivation of the antibiotics. β-Lactams have not been used in clinical practice to treat TB infections, because an active penicillinase was reported in M. tuberculosis (Lessel, 1996). BlaC is a class A β-lactamase that contains a nucleophilic serine residue (Ser70) and shares sequence homology with the penicillin-binding protein domain of the ancestral d,d-transpeptidases. Recent studies including our lab show that β-lactam drugs like Clavulanate, Carbapenem, and Meropenem are used primarily against this type of resistant bacteria (Hugonnet et al., 2009). β-lactamase induces the same acetylating reaction with all of these drugs but cannot induce deacetylation. As a result, those drugs remain attached with β-lactamase even after the distortion of their β-lactam ring. At this time, secondary treatment has been done by applying previously used potent penicillin like β-lactam drugs with this primarily treated β-lactamase. In current study, we conducted kinetic and mass spectrometric analysis of different BlaC inhibitors, like NXL104 (Xu et al., 2012) and showed that how they quantitatively inactivates BlaC by forming a carbamyl linkage with the enzyme. In addition, we determined the three-dimensional structures of the different reactive forms of these drugs for better understanding the undergoing mechanisms involved in this inhibition process. Based on our understanding, we are trying to develop novel small molecules with better inhibitory process.