A Clinical Drug Library Screen Identifies Tosufloxacin as Being Highly Active against Staphylococcus aureus Persisters

Hongxia Niu; Peng Cui; Rebecca Yee; Wanliang Shi; Shuo Zhang; Jie Feng; David Sullivan; Wenhong Zhang; Bingdong Zhu; Ying Zhang

doi:10.3390/antibiotics4030329

A Clinical Drug Library Screen Identifies Tosufloxacin as Being Highly Active against Staphylococcus aureus Persisters

Antibiotics (Basel). 2015 Jul 31;4(3):329-36. doi: 10.3390/antibiotics4030329.

Authors

Hongxia Niu^{1

2}, Peng Cui^{3

4}, Rebecca Yee⁵, Wanliang Shi⁶, Shuo Zhang⁷, Jie Feng⁸, David Sullivan⁹, Wenhong Zhang⁴, Bingdong Zhu², Ying Zhang¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. bdzhu@lzu.edu.cn.
² Lanzhou Center for Tuberculosis Research and Institute of Pathogenic Biology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China. bdzhu@lzu.edu.cn.
³ Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. zhangwenhong@fudan.edu.cn.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology, Department of Infectious Diseases, Huashan Hospital, Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, Shanghai 200040, China. zhangwenhong@fudan.edu.cn.
⁵ Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. ryee2@jhu.edu.
⁶ Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. wshi3@jhu.edu.
⁷ Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. shuozhang66@gmail.com.
⁸ Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. jfeng16@jhu.edu.
⁹ Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. dsulliv7@jhmi.edu.
¹⁰ Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. yzhang@jhsph.edu.

Abstract

To identify effective compounds that are active against Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) persisters, we screened a clinical drug library consisting of 1524 compounds and identified six drug candidates that had anti-persister activity: tosufloxacin, clinafloxacin, sarafloxacin, doxycycline, thiostrepton, and chlorosalicylanilide. Among them, tosufloxacin had the highest anti-persister activity, which could completely eradicate S. aureus persisters within 2 days in vitro. Clinafloxacin ranked the second with very few persisters surviving the drug exposure. Interestingly, we found that both tosufloxacin and trovafloxacin that had high activity against persisters contained at the N-1 position the 2,4-difluorophenyl group, which is absent in other less active quinolones and may be associated with the high anti-persister activity. Further studies are needed to evaluate tosufloxacin in animal models and to explain its unique activity against bacterial persisters. Our findings may have implications for improved treatment of persistent bacterial infections.

Keywords: Staphylococcus aureus; clinafloxacin; clinical drug library; persisters; tosufloxacin.

Abstract

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