Researchers of Faculty of Pharmacy participated in discovery how D-cycloserine works at the molecular level

Researchers at the Faculty of Pharmacy Professor dr. Stanislav Gobec and dr. Vita Godec participated in an investigation led by Professor David Roper at Warwick’s School of Life Sciences and Dr Luiz Pedro Carvalho from The Francis Crick Institute that revealed how the antibiotic D-cycloserine uniquely works at a molecular level.

D-cycloserine is an old antibiotic drug which is effective against many microbial diseases such as tuberculosis, but is often used as a second line treatment, because of some adverse side-effects. The researchers have now discovered that it acts chemically in very different ways on multiple bacterial targets.

A paper published in Nature Communications reveals a deeper understanding of how D-cycloserine binds to the D-alanine-D-alanine ligase enzyme and becomes chemically modified on the enzyme. The chemical species formed here has never been seen before and it opens up possibility of development of new antibiotic drugs that will be devoid of unwanted side effects.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02118-7