Why should cell biologists study microbial pathogens?

Welch, Matthew D.

Antibacterial agents that target host cell molecules are also being explored. Such agents will be particularly useful in cases for which there is no effective vaccine, and/or resistance to conventional antibiotics is common, as with M. tuberculosis. A recent fruitful approach was to screen through a library of bioactive small molecules known to target host proteins for those that restrict the growth of M. tuberculosis (Stanley et al., 2014) . This identified compounds that affect several protein classes, including G protein-coupled receptors, ion channels, membrane transport proteins, kinases, and anti-inflammatories. Through this and other studies, a list can be compiled of FDA-approved drugs that target host molecules and inhibit M. tuberculosis infection, including the antidepressants fluoxetine (Prozac; Stanley et al., 2014) and nortriptyline (Sundaramurthy et al., 2013) ; the epidermal growth factor receptor kinase inhibitor gefitinib (Stanley et al., 2014) and Abl kinase inhibitor imatinib (Napier et al., 2011; Bruns et al., 2012) ; and the antiseizure medication carbamazepine (Schiebler et al., 2015) . A common theme linking these drugs is that they induce autophagy, again highlighting the potential utility of autophagy-stimulating drugs in the prevention and treatment of infections (Rubinsztein et al., 2015) .