Scientists are concerned by an ever-increasing rise in bacterial resistance to antibiotics, particularly in diseases such as malaria, toxoplasmosis, tuberculosis, and pneumonia, where the currently used therapies become progressively less efficient. It is therefore necessary to develop new, safe, and more efficient antibiotics. Recently, the existence of the shikimic acid pathway has been demonstrated in certain parasites such as the malaria parasite. These types of parasites cause more than a million casualties per year, and their effects are particularly strong in people with a compromised immune system such as HIV patients. In such cases it is possible that inhibitors of this pathway could be active against a large variety of microorganisms responsible for the more opportunistic infections in HIV patients. Interest in this pathway has resulted in the development of a wide variety of inhibitors for the enzymes involved. This review covers recent progress made in the development of inhibitors of the third enzyme of this pathway, i.e., the type II dehydroquinase. The X-ray crystal structures of several dehydroquinases (Streptomyces coelicolor, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, etc.) with an inhibitor bound in the active site have recently been solved. These complexes identified a number of key interactions involved in inhibitor binding and have shed light on several aspects of the catalytic mechanism. These crystal structures have also proven to be a useful tool for the design of potent and selective enzyme inhibitors, a feature that will also be discussed.
(c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.