An inquiry-based exercise in medicinal chemistry: Synthesis of a molecular library and screening for potential antimalarial and anti-inflammatory compounds

An Oral Fluorouracil Prodrug, Capecitabine, Mitigates a Gram-Positive Systemic Infection in Mice

New classes of antibiotics are needed to fight bacterial infections, and repurposing existing drugs as antibiotics may enable rapid deployment of new treatments. Screens for antibacterials have been traditionally performed in standard laboratory media, but bacterial pathogens experience very different environmental conditions during infection, including nutrient limitation. To introduce the next generation of researchers to modern drug discovery methods, we developed a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) in which undergraduate students screened a library of FDA-approved drugs for their ability, in a nutrient-poor medium, to prevent the growth of the human Gram-negative bacterial pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. The nine drugs identified all disrupt DNA metabolism in bacteria and eukaryotes. One of the hit compounds, capecitabine, is a well-tolerated oncology drug that is administered orally, a preferred treatment route. We demonstrated that capecitabine is more effective at inhibiting S. Typhimurium growth in nutrient-limited than in standard rich microbiological broth, an explanation for why the antibiotic activity of this compound has not been previously recognized. Capecitabine is enzymatically converted to the active pyrimidine analogue, fluorouracil (5-FU), and Gram-positive bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus, are significantly more sensitive to 5-FU than Gram-negative bacteria. We therefore tested capecitabine for efficacy in a murine model of S. aureus peritonitis. Oral capecitabine administration reduced the colonization of tissues and increased animal survival in a dose-responsive manner. Since capecitabine is inexpensive, orally available, and relatively safe, it may have utility for treatment of intractable Gram-positive bacterial infections. IMPORTANCE As bacterial infections become increasingly insensitive to antibiotics, whether established, off-patent drugs could treat infections becomes an important question. At the same time, basic research has revealed that during infection, mammals starve pathogens for nutrients and, in response, bacteria dramatically alter their biology. Therefore, it may be fruitful to search for drugs that could be repurposed as antibiotics using bacteria grown with limited nutrients. This approach, executed with undergraduate student researchers, identified nine drugs known to interfere with the production and/or function of DNA. We further explored one of these drugs, capecitabine, a well-tolerated human oncology drug. Oral administration of capecitabine reduced infection with the human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus and increased survival in mice. These data suggest that capecitabine has potential as a therapy for patients with otherwise untreatable bacterial infections.