Fighting tuberculosis with bacterial self-sabotage

With 1.6 million casualties in 2021, tuberculosis remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease arising from a single agent. Resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium causing the disease, are now common, resulting in an epidemic comeback since 2020, according to WHO. Scientists at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) and collaborators have harnessed the BacPROTAC technology to develop an antimicrobial agent that forces targeted bacterial proteins into suicide. Their study, now published in the journal Cell, brings new hope to combat bacterial pathogens.