Antibiotic
resistance is a massive and serious threat to human
welfare and healthcare. Apart from being genetically resistant to
antibiotics, the other important mechanism by which bacteria can evade
antibiotics is multidrug tolerance. Here cells enter into a transiently
nongrowing phase, and as a result, latent infection remains inside
the host, causing disease recurrence. Biofilm-derived antibiotic tolerance
and persister formation of the pathogenic bacteria inside the host
remain a serious issue of
treatment failure and recurrent chronic infection in the case of all
major pathogens. As a result, new chemotherapeutic agents are sought
that specifically inhibit biofilm formation or maturation as well
as cause the dispersion of mature biofilms, thus allowing the conventional
drugs to kill sensitive cells residing inside. This mini-review attempts
to analyze different small-molecule-based chemical approaches that
have been used to enable bacterial biofilm inhibition at different
steps of maturation.
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