molecules of the month

Context. TXA6101 (TAXIS Pharmaceuticals) is a filamentous temperature-sensitive mutant Z (FtsZ) protein inhibitor being developed for targeting gram-negative bacteria. Drug resistance continues to be a paramount challenge in antibiotic therapy and there is an ongoing need to explore and develop novel antibacterial drugs. FtsZ has long been considered an attractive antibiotic target due to its critical role in bacterial cell division coupled with its high conservation in prokaryotes, but low homology to eukaryotic tubulin. Various peptides, natural products, and synthetic small molecules have been shown to induce bacterial cell death through inhibition of FtsZ, the most notable of which was Prolysis Ltd’s PC190723 which struggled to progress in part due to issues with solubility. The most advanced FtsZ inhibitor is…