Thiruvananthapuram, Aug. 12 -- Scientists at the BRIC-Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (BRIC-RGCB) have found that the FDA-approved cancer drug sorafenib could be repurposed to combat multidrug-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae, a major cause of bacterial pneumonia and contributor to antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
The breakthrough, published in mBio, the journal of the American Society for Microbiology, shows that sorafenib can disable a key bacterial regulatory protein, offering a potential new strategy to tackle antibiotic-resistant infections that cause more than a million deaths annually.
The study found that sorafenib targets StkP, a bacterial protein that regulates cell division, cell-wall formation and virulence. Using compu...