New approaches for anti-infective drug discovery: antibiotics, vaccines and beyond

Infectious disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, and billions of dollars are invested every year in developing anti-infective drugs. In the meantime, resistant bacteria are on the steady rise and render many once effective drugs useless. The tremendous funding and the urgent need to treat the resistant bacterial infections lead to the rapid progress on development of new drugs and potential new drug targets. New discoveries are being made that increase our understanding of microbial pathogenesis. Technological advancement is also being made to accelerate the drug discovery process. This review will mainly focus on discussing novel strategies on the development of antibiotics and vaccines for treating bacterial infections. Details of how some of the emerging technologies such as genomics and bioinformatics are accelerating the drug discovery process will be highlighted. Newly emerging concepts in controlling bacterial infections such as the use of probiotics and enzybiotics will also be briefly described.