Biodegradation of oxytetracycline and enrofloxacin by autochthonous microbial communities from estuarine sediments.

This work investigated the potential of microbial communities native to an estuarine environment to biodegrade enrofloxacin (ENR) and oxytetracycline (OXY). Sediments collected from two sites in the Douro river estuary (Porto, Portugal) were used as inocula for the biodegradation experiments. Experiments were carried out for one month, during which ENR and OXY (1 mg L-1) were supplemented individually or in mixture to the cultures at 10-day intervals. Acetate (400 mg L-1) was added to the cultures every 3 days to support microbial growth. A series of experimental controls were established in parallel to determine the influence of abiotic breakdown and adsorption in the removal of the antibiotics. Removal of antibiotics was followed by measuring their concentration in the culture medium. Additionally, next-generation sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene amplicon was employed to understand how microbial communities responded to the presence of the antibiotics. At the end of the biodegradation experiments, microbial cultures derived from the two estuarine sediments were able to remove up to 98% of ENR and over 95% of OXY. The mixture of antibiotics did not affect their removal. ENR was removed mainly by biodegradation, while abiotic mechanisms were found to have a higher influence in the removal of OXY. Both antibiotics adsorbed at different extents to the estuarine sediments used as inocula but exhibited a higher affinity to the sediment with finer texture and higher organic matter content. The presence of ENR and OXY in the culture media influenced the dynamics of the microbial communities, resulting in a lower microbial diversity and richness and in the predominance of bacterial species belonging to the phylum Proteobacteria. Therefore, microbial communities native from estuarine environments have potential to respond to the contamination caused by antibiotics and may be considered for the recovering of impacted environments through bioremediation.

Chemoinformatics for medicinal chemistry: in silico model to enable the discovery of potent and safer anti-cocci agents.

BACKGROUND: Gram-positive cocci are increasingly antibiotic-resistant bacteria responsible for causing serious diseases. Chemoinformatics can help to rationalize the discovery of more potent and safer antibacterial drugs. We have developed a chemoinformatic model for simultaneous prediction of anti-cocci activities, and profiles involving absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination and toxicity (ADMET). RESULTS: A dataset containing 48,874 cases from many different chemicals assayed under dissimilar experimental conditions was created. The best model displayed accuracies around 93% in both training and prediction (test) sets. Quantitative contributions of several fragments to the biological effects were calculated and analyzed. Multiple biological effects of the investigational drug JNJ-Q2 were correctly predicted. CONCLUSION: Our chemoinformatic model can be used as powerful tool for virtual screening of promising anti-cocci agents.

Fluorescence detection of Zabofloxacin, a novel fluoroquinolone antibiotic, in plasma, bile, and urine by HPLC: the first oral and intravenous applications in a pharmacokinetic study in rats.

PURPOSE: To develop an HPLC method using fluorescence detection for the pharmacokinetic evaluation of levels of zabofloxacin, a novel broad spectrum fluoroquinolone antibiotic, in the plasma, bile and urine of rats. METHODS: A simple reversed-phase HPLC method using a C18 column with fluorescence detection was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of zabofloxain and enrofloxacin as an internal standard. The plasma sample was treated with methanol for protein precipitation, and treatment of the bile and urine samples included deproteinization and extraction using chloroform. The applicability of the developed assay method to pharmacokinetic studies of zabofloxacin in rats was examined. Zabofloxacin was intravenously and orally administered to rats at a dose of 20 mg/kg. RESULTS: The limits of quantification (LOQ) was determined to be 50 ng/mL for the plasma with acceptable linearity ranging from 50 to 25,000 ng/mL (R>0.999), and 0.5 µg/mL for the bile and urine samples with acceptable linearity ranging from 0.5 to 100 µg/mL (R>0.999). The validation parameters for zabofloxacin were found to be acceptable according to FDA assay validation (2001). While zabofloxacin in plasma and urine has been stable in all tested handling conditions, it has been unstable in bile during freeze-thaw cycles for 24 h at room temperature. Following intravenous and oral administration of zabofloxacin to rats at a dose of 20 mg/kg, concentration was quantifiable in plasma for up to 8 h. The bioavailability of zabofloxacin was 27.7%, and it was excreted into bile and urine at about 8% each per oral administration. CONCLUSIONS: These observations suggest that a validated assay can be used in pharmacokinetic studies of zabofloxacin in small animals. Due to the limited stability of zabofloxcin in rat bile, freeze-thaw cycles or prolonged handling at room temperature is not recommended. This article is open to POST-PUBLICATION REVIEW. Registered readers (see "For Readers") may comment by clicking on ABSTRACT on the issue's contents page.

Anti-tubercular drug designing by structure based screening of combinatorial libraries.

In the current study, the applicability and scope of descriptor based QSAR models to complement virtual screening using molecular docking approach have been applied to identify potential virtual screening hits targeting DNA gyrase A from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, an effective and validated anti-mycobacterial target. Initially QSAR models were developed against M. fortuitum and M. smegmatis using a series of structurally related fluoroquinolone derivatives as DNA gyrase inhibitors. Both the QSAR models yielded significant cross validated Q² values of 0.6715 and 0.6944 and R² values of 0.7250 and 0.7420, respectively. The statistically significant models were validated by a test set of 22 compounds with predictive R² value of 0.7562 and 0.7087 for M. fortuitum and M. smegmatis respectively. To aid the creation of novel antituberculosis compounds, combinatorial library was developed on fluoroquinolone template to derive a data set of 5280 compounds whose activity values have been measured by the above models. Highly active compounds predicted from the models were subjected to molecular docking study to investigate the mechanism of drug binding with the DNA gyrase A protein of M. tuberculosis and the compounds showing similar type of binding patterns with that of the existing drug molecules, like sparfloxacin, were finally reported. It is seen that hydrophobic characteristics of molecular structure together with few hydrogen bond interactions are playing an essential role in antimicrobial activity for the fluoroquinolone derivatives. A representative set of seven compounds with high predicted MIC values were sorted out in the present study.

Acetylation of fluoroquinolone antimicrobial agents by an Escherichia coli strain isolated from a municipal wastewater treatment plant.

AIMS: To isolate environmental bacteria capable of transforming fluoroquinolones to inactive molecules. METHODS AND RESULTS: Bacteria were isolated from the aerobic liquor of a wastewater treatment plant on a medium containing norfloxacin (100 mg l(-1)). Twenty-two isolates were highly resistant (minimal inhibitory concentration: 6.25-200 microg ml(-1)) to five fluoroquinolones and six of them were positive by PCR amplification for the aminoglycoside resistance gene aac(6')-Ib. Of these, only Escherichia coli strain LR09 had the ciprofloxacin-acetylating variant gene aac(6')-Ib-cr; HPLC and mass spectrometry showed that this strain transformed both ciprofloxacin and norfloxacin by N-acetylation. This bacterium also had mutations in the quinolone-resistance determining regions of the gyrA and parC genes. CONCLUSIONS: An E. coli isolate from wastewater, which possessed at least two distinct fluoroquinolone resistance mechanisms, inactivated ciprofloxacin and norfloxacin by N-acetylation. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: This is the first report of N-acetylation of fluoroquinolones by an aac(6')-Ib-cr-containing bacterium from an environmental source.

Impact of drug-exposure intensity and duration of therapy on the emergence of Staphylococcus aureus resistance to a quinolone antimicrobial.

We have shown previously in animal model and in vitro systems that antimicrobial therapy intensity has a profound influence on subpopulations of resistant organisms. Little attention has been paid to the effect of therapy duration on resistant subpopulations. We examined the influence of therapy intensity (area under the concentration/time curve for 24 h:minimum inhibitory concentration [AUC24:MIC] ratio) and therapy duration on resistance emergence using an in vitro model of Staphylococcus aureus infection. AUC24:MIC ratios of>or=100 were necessary to kill a substantial portion of the total population. Importantly, we demonstrated that therapy duration is a critical parameter. As the duration increased beyond 5 days, the intensity needed to suppress the antibiotic-resistant subpopulations increased, even when the initial bacterial kill was>4 log10 (cfu/mL). These findings were prospectively validated in an independent experiment in which exposures were calculated from the results of fitting a large mathematical model to all data simultaneously. All of the prospectively determined predictions were fulfilled in this validation experiment.

Modification of enrofloxacin treatment regimens for poultry experimentally infected with Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium DT104 to minimize selection of resistance.

We hypothesized that higher doses of fluoroquinolones for a shorter duration could maintain efficacy (as measured by reduction in bacterial count) while reducing selection in chickens of bacteria with reduced susceptibility. Chicks were infected with Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium DT104 and treated 1 week later with enrofloxacin at the recommended dose for 5 days (water dose adjusted to give 10 mg/kg of body weight of birds or equivalence, i.e., water at 50 ppm) or at 2.5 or 5 times the recommended dose for 2 days or 1 day, respectively. The dose was delivered continuously (ppm) or pulsed in the water (mg/kg) or by gavage (mg/kg). In vitro in sera, increasing concentrations of 0.5 to 8 microg/ml enrofloxacin correlated with increased activity. In vivo, the efficacy of the 1-day treatment was significantly less than that of the 2- and 5-day treatments. The 2-day treatments showed efficacy similar to that of the 5-day treatment in all but one repeat treatment group and significantly (P < 0.01) reduced the Salmonella counts. Dosing at 2.5x the recommended dose and pulsed dosing both increased the peak antibiotic concentrations in cecal contents, liver, lung, and sera as determined by high-pressure liquid chromatography. There was limited evidence that shorter treatment regimens (in particular the 1-day regimen) selected for fewer strains with reduced susceptibility. In conclusion, the 2-day treatment would overall require a shorter withholding time than the 5-day treatment and, in view of the increased peak antibiotic concentrations, may give rise to improved efficacy, in particular for treating respiratory and systemic infections. However, it would be necessary to validate the 2-day regimen in a field situation and in particular against respiratory and systemic infections to validate or refute this hypothesis.

Antimicrosporidial activity of (fluoro)quinolones in vitro and in vivo.

Microsporidia are a cause of emerging and opportunistic infections in humans and animals. Although two drugs are currently being used to treat microsporidiosis, concerns exist that albendazole is only selective for inhibiting some species of microsporidia that infect mammals, and fumagillin appears to have been found to be toxic. During a limited sequence survey of the Vittaforma corneae genome, a partial gene encoding for the ParC topoisomerase IV subunit was identified. The purpose of this set of studies was to determine if fluoroquinolones, which target topoisomerase IV, exert activity against Encephalitozoon intestinalis and V. corneae in vitro, and whether these compounds could prolong survival of V. corneae-infected athymic mice. Fifteen fluoroquinolones were tested. Of these, norfloxacin and ofloxacin inhibited E. intestinalis replication by more than 70% compared with non-treated control cultures, while gatifloxacin, lomefloxacin, moxifloxacin, and nalidixic acid (sodium salt) inhibited both E. intestinalis and V. corneae by at least 60% at concentrations not toxic to the host cells. These drugs were tested in vivo also, where gatifloxacin, lomefloxacin, norfloxacin, and ofloxacin prolonged survival of V. corneae-infected athymic mice (P < 0.05), whereas moxifloxacin and nalidixic acid failed to prolong survival. Therefore, these results support continued studies for evaluating the efficacy of the fluoroquinolones for treating microsporidiosis and for characterizing the target(s) of these fluoroquinolones in the microsporidia.

Prulifloxacin.

Prulifloxacin, the prodrug of ulifloxacin, is a broad-spectrum oral fluoroquinolone antibacterial agent. After absorption, prulifloxacin is metabolised by esterases to ulifloxacin. The drug has a long elimination half-life, allowing once-daily administration. Ulifloxacin is generally more active in vitro than other fluoroquinolones against a variety of clinical isolates of Gram-negative bacteria, including community and nosocomial isolates of Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp., Proteus, Providencia and Morganella spp., Moraxella catarrhalis and Haemophilus spp. The activity of ulifloxacin against Pseudomonas aeruginosa varies between countries. Gram-positive organisms, including meticillin- or oxacillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus spp. and Italian community isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae are susceptible to ulifloxacin. Activity against Spanish strains of S. pneumoniae is moderate. In well designed clinical trials, good clinical and bacteriological efficacy (similar to that of ciprofloxacin, amoxicillin/clavulanic acid or pefloxacin) was seen with prulifloxacin 600 mg once daily for 10 days in patients with acute exacerbations of chronic bronchitis or complicated lower urinary tract infections (UTIs), and with single-dose prulifloxacin 600 mg in acute, uncomplicated lower UTIs. Prulifloxacin was generally well tolerated in clinical trials, with a similar tolerability profile to that of ciprofloxacin.