Trends in therapeutic drug conjugates for bacterial diseases: a patent review

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Drug conjugates are trend topics in Chemical Biology. These entities are an emerging class of highly potent biopharmaceutical drugs, best known in the field of oncology, that have been also designed as a targeted therapy/diagnosis for the treatment/prevention of several bacterial diseases. Antibiotic resistance is now a major threat to public health, and targeted strategies can reduce resistance. The following review aims at giving an overview of the patented therapeutic innovations covering these areas. Particular attention has been given to antibacterial drug conjugates in the last 30 years.

Areas covered: The authors provide an overview of the scientific reports describing the research and development of new drug conjugates for bacterial diseases. The review emphasizes the rationale behind synthesis, biological activities and improvement of the new drug conjugates. New technologies applied for the research in this field have also been discussed. The article is based on the most relevant literature related to the development of new therapeutic solutions. The patents presented in this review have been collected from multiple electronic databases including SciFinder, Pubmed, Espacenet and Mendeley.

Expert opinion: The new drug conjugates described in the current review proved to display improved delivery, efficacy, targeting abilities and fewer side effects. Versatile approaches were invented to achieve these goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Bacterial diseases
• drug conjugates
• antibiotic improvement
• antibiotic targeting

Article highlights

• We provide an analysis of therapeutics and discuss commercial aspects regarding drug conjugates for bacterial diseases.

• We comment on emerging technologies for antibiotic improvement and targeting.

• We discuss the enormous growth potential as future diagnosis, therapeutics and preventive (vaccines).

• We discuss the improvements in targeting, efficacy and delivering of the new therapeutic alternatives (drug conjugate vs isolated drug).

• We analyzed several strategies pursued to improve the efficacy and decrease the toxicity of these therapeutic drugs.

This box summarizes key points contained in the article.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Additional information

Funding

We thank FCT Portugal (Postdoctoral Fellowship, SFRH/BPD/103172/2014 to P.M.S.D.C.; FCT Investigator to G.J.L.B.), the EU (Marie-Curie CIG and Marie-Sklodowska Curie ITN Protein Conjugates to G.J.L.B.), Xunta de Galicia (Galician Plan for Research, Innovation and Growth 2011–2015 - Plan I2C, ED481B 2014/086-0 to M.J.M.) and the EPSRC for funding. G.J.L.B. is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and the recipient of an European Research Council Starting Grant (TagIt).