Preclinical pharmacology of GAR-936, a novel glycylcycline antibacterial agent

GAR-936 is an analog of minocycline, a semisynthetic derivative of tetracycline. It has broad-spectrum antibacterial activity in vitro and in vivo. The new class of tetracyclines to which GAR-936 belongs is named the glycylcyclines. Tetracyclines act by inhibiting protein translation in bacteria, presumably by binding to the 30S ribosomal subunit and blocking entry of amino-acyl transfer RNA molecules into the A site of the ribosome. This prevents incorporation of amino acid residues into elongating peptide chains. In general, tetracyclines are considered bacteriostatic and the critical therapeutic parameter is the area under the concentration-time curve. GAR-936 has bactericidal activity; at 4 times the minimum inhibitory concentration, a 2- to 3-log reduction in colony counts was seen against Streptococcus pneumoniae, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, HaemophiZus influenzae, Escherichia coli, and Staphylococcus aureus. GAR-936 is active against the antibiotic-resistant gram-positive bacteria methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, penicillin-resistant S. pneumoniae, and vancomycin-resistant enterococci. It is most significant that GAR-936 and other glycylcyclines are active against bacterial strains carrying either or both of the two major forms of tetracycline resistance: efflux and ribosomal protection. Using isogenic panels of bacteria carrying various tetracycline-resistance determinants, a series of more than 300 analogs was tested for antibacterial activity, which allowed for structure-activity relationships to be determined. Results indicated that certain substituents at the 9 position of the tetracycline molecule restored activity against bacteria harboring genes encoding either or both efflux and ribosomal protection. A single chemical modification overcame the two molecularly distinct forms of resistance while maintaining activity against susceptible gram-positive, gram-negative, aerobic, and anaerobic bacteria. Although mutants can be generated that are less susceptible to previously studied glycylcyclines, only marginal differences in susceptibility to GAR-936 were noted. Therefore, whereas emergence of resistance to any widely administered antibiotic is a foregone conclusion, resistance to GAR-936 will not readily arise by trivial mutations in existing resistance genes.