Scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), MV Lomonosov (Moscow State University), proved that triphenylphosphonium derivatives can act as antibiotics that can kill a cell-damaging pathogen. In the future, these compounds may be used specifically for the treatment of dangerous bacterial diseases such as tuberculosis and staphylococcal infections. This was reported to socialbites.ca at the Russian Ministry of Education and Science.
Finding antibiotics that attack bacteria without affecting the nuclear cells of living organisms remains a challenge. Experts consider it promising to develop drugs based on protonophores, substances that transport protons across the membrane using the potential difference mechanism. One such compound is triphenylphosphonium.
A typical human cell has a potential difference of -60mV, while bacterial cells typically have a charge of -180mV. Therefore, bacterial cells are more attractive to positively charged phosphonium derivatives. This makes it possible to act selectively.
Triphenylphosphonium derivatives are actively used as vectors to deliver antibiotics to cells and help them survive and recover from infection, but they have always been considered highly toxic and this has severely limited their use. Russian scientists have found a way to act only on bacterial cells.
“Triphenylphosphonium derivatives have a negative effect on bacterial cells and a positive effect on general body cells. This opens up a wide range of uses, for example, when they enter the liver, they do not harm the general cells of the body, but they kill bacteria and other individual cells,” said MIPT Pavel Nazarov, Associate Professor at the Training Programs Center of the Phystech-School of Biological and Medical Physics, AN Belozersky Moscow State University.
Triphenylphosphonium derivatives slow down processes in the bacterial cell: it loses its ability to divide, synthesize proteins and spend all the remaining energy pumping out the antioxidant. This makes it possible to create promising antibiotics that can cope even with particularly dangerous infections.