Pros and cons of the tuberculosis drugome approach--an empirical analysis

PLoS One. 2014 Jun 27;9(6):e100829. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0100829. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), the causative pathogen of tuberculosis (TB), has become a serious threat to global public health. Yet the development of novel drugs against MTB has been lagging. One potentially powerful approach to drug development is computation-aided repositioning of current drugs. However, the effectiveness of this approach has rarely been examined. Here we select the "TB drugome" approach--a protein structure-based method for drug repositioning for tuberculosis treatment--to (1) experimentally validate the efficacy of the identified drug candidates for inhibiting MTB growth, and (2) computationally examine how consistently drug candidates are prioritized, considering changes in input data. Twenty three drugs in the TB drugome were tested. Of them, only two drugs (tamoxifen and 4-hydroxytamoxifen) effectively suppressed MTB growth at relatively high concentrations. Both drugs significantly enhanced the inhibitory effects of three first-line anti-TB drugs (rifampin, isoniazid, and ethambutol). However, tamoxifen is not a top-listed drug in the TB drugome, and 4-hydroxytamoxifen is not approved for use in humans. Computational re-examination of the TB drugome indicated that the rankings were subject to technical and data-related biases. Thus, although our results support the effectiveness of the TB drugome approach for identifying drugs that can potentially be repositioned for stand-alone applications or for combination treatments for TB, the approach requires further refinements via incorporation of additional biological information. Our findings can also be extended to other structure-based drug repositioning methods.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Antitubercular Agents / pharmacology*
  • Antitubercular Agents / therapeutic use
  • Bacterial Proteins / antagonists & inhibitors
  • Bacterial Proteins / metabolism
  • Drug Combinations
  • Drug Resistance, Bacterial / drug effects
  • Ethambutol / pharmacology
  • Humans
  • Isoniazid / pharmacology
  • Microbial Sensitivity Tests
  • Mycobacterium tuberculosis / drug effects*
  • Mycobacterium tuberculosis / metabolism
  • Rifampin / pharmacology
  • Tamoxifen / analogs & derivatives
  • Tamoxifen / pharmacology
  • Tuberculosis / drug therapy

Substances

  • Antitubercular Agents
  • Bacterial Proteins
  • Drug Combinations
  • Tamoxifen
  • afimoxifene
  • Ethambutol
  • Isoniazid
  • Rifampin

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the National Health Research Institutes intramural funding (PH-101-SP05 and PH-102-SP04: www.nhri.org.tw). The computational facilities for this work were partly supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (Taiwan Bioinformatics Institute Core Facility (NSC102-2319-B-400-001): www.most.gov.tw). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.