Repurposing the anticancer drug cisplatin with the aim of developing novel Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection control agents

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • Mingjun Yuan
  • Song Lin Chua
  • Yang Liu
  • Daniela I. Drautz-Moses
  • Joey Kuok Hoong Yam
  • Thet Tun Aung
  • Roger W. Beuerman
  • May Margarette Santillan Salido
  • Stephan C. Schuster
  • Choon Hong Tan
  • Givskov, Michael
  • Liang Yang
  • Nielsen, Thomas Eiland

Antibiotic resistance threatens effective treatment of microbial infections globally. This situation has spurred the hunt for new antimicrobial compounds in both academia and the pharmaceutical industry. Here, we report how the widely used antitumor drug cisplatin may be repurposed as an effective antimicrobial against the nosocomial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Cisplatin was found to effectively kill strains of P. aeruginosa. In such experiments, transcriptomic profiling showed upregulation of the recA gene, which is known to be important for DNA repair, implicating that cisplatin could interfere with DNA replication in P. aeruginosa. Cisplatin treatment significantly repressed the type III secretion system (T3SS), which is important for the secretion of exotoxins. Furthermore, cisplatin was also demonstrated to eradicate in vitro biofilms and in vivo biofilms in a murine keratitis model. This showed that cisplatin could be effectively used to eradicate biofilm infections which were otherwise difficult to be treated by conventional antibiotics. Although cisplatin is highly toxic for humans upon systemic exposure, a low toxicity was demonstrated with topical treatment. This indicated that higher-than-minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) doses of cisplatin could be topically applied to treat persistent and recalcitrant P. aeruginosa infections.

Original languageEnglish
JournalBeilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry
Volume14
Pages (from-to)3059-3069
Number of pages11
ISSN2195-951X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

    Research areas

  • Biofilm, Cisplatin, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Resistance, Type III secretion

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