Combination therapies for combating antimicrobial resistance
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Updated: May 29, 2026

Quadruple-Checkerboard: A Modification of the Three-Dimensional Checkerboard for Studying Drug Combinations
Published on: July 24, 2021
1Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA. fischbach@fischbachgroup.org
Abstract:
New drug development strategies are needed to combat antimicrobial resistance. The object of this perspective is to highlight one such strategy: treating infections with sets of drugs rather than individual drugs. We will highlight three categories of combination therapy: those that inhibit targets in different pathways; those that inhibit distinct nodes in the same pathway; and those that inhibit the very same target in different ways. We will then consider examples of naturally occurring combination therapies produced by micro-organisms, and conclude by discussing key opportunities and challenges for making more widespread use of drug combinations.
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