Structure-guided, target-based drug discovery – exploiting genome information from HIV to mycobacterial infections

The use of protein crystallography in structure-guided drug discovery allows identification of potential inhibitor-binding sites and optimisation of interactions of hits and lead compounds with a target protein. An early example of this approach was the use of the structure of HIV protease in designing AIDS antivirals. More recently, use of structure-guided design with fragment-based drug discovery, which reduces the size of screening libraries by decreasing complexity, has improved ligand efficiency in drug design. Here, we discuss the use of structure-guided target identification and lead optimisation using fragment-based approaches in the development of new antimicrobials for mycobacterial infections.