Novel Pharmacological Inhibitors for Bacterial Protein Toxins

Beschreibung

Many medically relevant bacteria cause severe human and animal diseases because they produce and release protein toxins that target mammalian cells. Because the toxin-induced cell damage is the reason for the clinical symptoms, the targeted pharmacological inhibition of the cytotoxic mode of action of bacterial toxins should prevent or cure the respective toxin-associated disease. Toxin inhibitors might be beneficial when the toxin acts in the absence of the producing bacteria (e.g., food poisoning), but also in combination with antibiotics in infectious diseases when the toxin-producing bacteria are present. The focus of this Special Issue of Toxins is on the development and characterization of novel inhibitors against bacterial toxins, e.g., toxin neutralizing antibodies, peptides or small compounds, as well as toxin pore blockers, which interfere with bacterial toxins and thereby protect cells from intoxication.

Autor*in

Barth Holger
Holger Barth studied Biology with a focus on Microbiology at the University of Darmstadt (Germany) and received his PhD in 1994 with a dissertation prepared at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg (Germany). From 1995 to 2004, he was first a group leader in the laboratory of Professor Klaus Aktories and later Assistant Professor at the Institute for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology of the University of Freiburg (Germany), where he started his work on bacterial protein toxins. In 2002, he received his habilitation and in 2005 he became a registered German and EU board toxicologist. Since 2004, he has been Professor for Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Ulm (Germany). Holger Barth is Editor of the textbook Toxikologie and an editorial board member of various journals in the field of Toxinology, Toxicology and Pharmacology. He is the chairman of the section “Biological Toxins” within the German Society of Toxicology (GT) and currently he serves as President of the GT. In 2017, Holger Barth also became the President of the German Society of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology (DGPT). Holger Barth´s research interests focus on the cellular uptake of bacterial protein toxins, in particular ADP-ribosylating toxins. His group discovered the role of host cell chaperones in intracellular membrane translocation of such toxins and works on novel pharmacological strategies to inhibit toxin uptake into mammalian cells. Professor Barth’s laboratory exploits the transport subunits of various bacterial toxins to deliver pharmacologically active molecules, e.g., therapeutic enzymes and peptides, into the cytosol of human target cells, in particular monocytes/macrophages, to modulate cell functions in the context of traumatic injury, inflammation and cancer.

Themen in »Novel Pharmacological Inhibitors for Bacterial Protein Toxins«

Bacterial AB-toxins Botulinum Neurotoxin (BoNT) Clostridium difficile toxins Clostridium perfringens toxins Diphtheria toxin Shiga toxin anthrax toxins anti-toxins binary clostridial actin ADP-ribosylating toxins black lipid bilayer membrane cellular uptake clostridial toxins dendrimers, intracellular transport membrane transport

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