Control of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection continues to be an issue, particularly in countries with a high tuberculosis (TB) burden in the tropical and sub-tropical regions. The effort to reduce the catastrophic cost of TB with the WHO’s End TB Strategy in 2035 is still obstructed by the emergence of drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) cases as result of various mutations of the MTB strain. In the approach to combat DR-TB, several potential antitubercular agents were discovered as inhibitors for various existing and novel targets. Host-directed therapy and immunotherapy also gained attention as the drug-susceptibility level of the pathogen can be reduced due to the pathogen’s evolutionary dynamics. This review is focused on the current progress and challenges in DR-TB treatment. We briefly summarized antitubercular compounds that are under development and trials for both DR-TB drug candidates and host-directed therapy. We also highlighted several problems in DR-TB diagnosis, the treatment regimen, and drug discovery that have an impact on treatment adherence and treatment failure.

Epimutation by DNA Methyltransferase 1 (DNMT1), an epigenetic regulator enzyme, may lead to the proliferation of breast cancer. In this report, 168,686 natural products from the PubChem database were screened and modified by in silico method to acquire the potential inhibitor of DNMT1. The initial screening of PubChem natural products using Lipinski’s and Veber’s rules of three and toxic properties have resulted in 2601 fragment candidates. Four fragments from pharmacophore-based molecular docking simulation were modified by utilizing FragFP and the Lipinski’s and Veber’s rules of five, and resulted in 51,200 ligands. The toxicological screening collected 13,563 ligands for a series of pharmacophore-based molecular docking simulations to sort out the modified ligands, which had the better binding activity and interactions to DNMT1 compared to the standards, SAH, SAM, and SFG. This step resulted in five ligand candidates, namely C-7756, C-5769, C-1723, C-2129, and C-2140. The ADME-Tox properties prediction showed that the selected ligands are generally better than standards in terms of druglikeness, GI absorption, and oral bioavailability. C-7756 exhibited a stronger affinity to DNMT1 as well as better ADME-Tox properties compared to the other ligands.

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Epigenetic alteration shows an essential role in the process of breast cancer cell proliferation and propagation. DNA methyltransferase (DNMT) is responsible for DNA methylation, resulted in the epigenetic silencing of multiple genes. Hence, inhibiting DNMT-1 is a promising way to block uncontrolled DNA methylation. This study aimed to retrieve a potential peptide compound as DNMT-1 inhibitor due to its desirable properties as drug candidate through virtual screening and molecular docking simulation. A total of 51,957 peptide ligands from PubChem database underwent computational pharmacological screening to eliminate compounds with undesired characteristics. Molecular docking simulation was done with generated pharmacophore features, and the potential ligands with good ΔG binding, RMSD value, and molecular interaction were cyclized to increase the bioavailability of the peptides. Cyclic peptide ligands were tested for its interaction with DNMT-1 protein and ADME-Tox properties. From these steps, three cyclic peptide ligands showed desirable characteristics as a new drug candidate for the DNMT1 inhibitor.

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