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Updated: Nov 6, 2025

Nanomechanics of Drug-target Interactions and Antibacterial Resistance Detection
Published on: October 25, 2013
An atomic perspective on improving daptomycin's activity
Pilar Blasco1, Chunlei Zhang1, Hoi Yee Chow1
1Department of Chemistry, State Key Lab of Synthetic Chemistry, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong.
Background:
Recently, through comprehensive medicinal chemistry efforts, we have found a new daptomycin analogue, termed kynomycin, showing enhanced activity against both methicillin-resistant S. aureus and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus in vitro and in vivo, with improved pharmacokinetics and lower cytotoxicity than daptomycin.
Methods:
In this study we compared the physicochemical properties of kynomycin with those of daptomycin from an atomic perspective by using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy and Molecular Dynamics simulations.
Results And Conclusion:
We observed that kynurenine methylation changes daptomycin's key physicochemical properties; its calcium dependent oligomerization efficiency is improved and the modified kynurenine strengths contacts with the lipid tail and tryptophan residues. In addition, it is observed that, compared to daptomycin, kynomycin tetramer is more stable and binds stronger to calcium. The combined experiments provide key clues for the improved antibacterial activity of kynomycin.
General Significance:
We expect that this approach will help study the calcium binding and oligomerization features of new calcium dependent peptide antibiotics.
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