Abstract
The discovery of penicillin opened the avenues for antibacterial drug
discovery to address the global problem of deadly infectious diseases. However,
despite the availability of potent antibiotics and effective vaccines, bacterial infections
are still the major contributors to morbidity and mortality worldwide. The use of
antibiotics is a two-edged sword; on the one hand, antibiotics have helped us combat
deadly bacterial infections. On the other hand, overuse of antibiotics has led bacterial
pathogens to develop drug resistance. The components of the bacterial cell-like cell
wall, cell membrane, protein synthesis, and nucleic acid synthesis were targeted to
develop effective drugs. Using these selective microbial targets, multiple potent
antibiotic classes were developed in the last century, but emerging bacterial resistance
and a decline in the number of new antibiotic approvals in recent years are pushing us
back to the pre-antibiotic era. An increase in multidrug-resistant strains and the
ineffectiveness of current drugs pose a challenge for researchers to develop new
antibiotics with a novel mechanism to treat drug resistance. In the current chapter, we
focus on the antibacterial drug used for the treatment of important human pathogens.