Breaking the energy chain: importance of ATP synthase in and its potential as a drug target.

Unveiling novel pathways for drug discovery forms the foundation of a new era in the combat against tuberculosis. The discovery of a novel drug, bedaquiline, targeting mycobacterial ATP synthase highlighted the targetability of the energy metabolism pathway. The significant potency of bedaquiline against heterogeneous population of marks ATP synthase as an important complex of the electron transport chain.

Antibacterial activity of structurally diverse natural prenylated isobavachalcone derivatives.

Isobavachalcone (IBC) is a natural prenylated flavonoid containing chalcone and prenyl chain moieties with a wide range of biological and pharmacological properties. In this work, we synthesized structurally diversified derivatives (IBC-2 to IBC-10) from the natural prenylated chalcone IBC isolated from and assessed their antibacterial potency against the Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial strains ATCC 29213, ATCC 15187, ATCC25922 and ATCC 27853. IBC and IBC-2 exhibited a minimum inhibition concentration (MIC) of 5.