Blocking Bacterial Division
Prolysis Ltd. has published in Science the first animal data on an inhibitor of the bacterial cell division protein FtsZ, showing that PC190723 has activity against Staphylococci, including methicillin- and multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.1 Other researchers want to see more rounds of optimization and testing in preclinical infectious disease models.
Bacterial FtsZ is a soluble monomeric protein that helps initiate cell division by forming a ring at the midline of the cell. Given the importance of proper cell division to the multiplication and viability of bacteria, FtsZ is an obvious but underutilized drug target, in part because of the previous lack of good cellular assays of bacterial cell division.2 Indeed, several groups including Prolysis have FtsZ inhibitors that showed antibacterial efficacy in vitro.3,4 The open question was whether the results would translate from the petri dish to animals...