Correlating Drug-Target Residence Time and Post-antibiotic Effect: Insight into Target Vulnerability

Target vulnerability correlates the level of drug-target engagement required to generate a pharmacological response. High vulnerability targets are those that require only a relatively small fraction of occupancy to achieve the desired pharmacological outcome, whereas low vulnerability targets require high levels of engagement. Here, we demonstrate that the slope of the correlation between drug-target residence time and the post-antibiotic effect (PAE) can be used to define the vulnerability of bacterial targets. For macrolides, a steep slope is observed between residence time on the E. coli ribosome and the PAE, indicating that the ribosome is a highly vulnerable drug target. The analysis of the residence time-PAE data for erythromycin, azithromycin, spiramycin, and telithromycin using a mechanistic pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic model that integrates drug-target kinetics into predictions of drug activity lead to the successful prediction of the cellular PAE for tylosin, which has the longest residence time (7.1 h) and PAE (5.8 h). Although the macrolide data support a connection between residence time, PAE, and bactericidality, many bactericidal β-lactam antibiotics do not give a PAE, illustrating the role of factors such as protein resynthesis in the expression of target vulnerability.