Foreword

The book “Recent Trends and The Future of Antimicrobial Agents” tries to explore various alternatives of multi drug resistant bacteria which are the major causes of therapeutic failure. The book provides various approaches to the solution and each section describes and analyses the approach towards the problem. Research is going on globally on various alternatives to treatment like Plant based antimicrobials, Photodynamic therapies, enzyme based and antibody based antimicrobial approaches, chemical compounds that act as antimicrobial agents, nano-materials which act as antimicrobial agents, probiotic, prebiotic and peptides compounds or agents. The writers have taken up each scenario to make the readers understand about the macro and micro factors associated with the approach.

The book attempts to throw light on the various aspects of the pathogenic multi drug resistant bacteria and takes a wide horizon on the impact of antibiotics on them. The discovery of penicillin paved the way for the antibiotics to become popular but as the bacteria can accumulate on multiple genes making them resistant to a particular drug, similarly the resistance can also be caused by an increased expression of genes responsible for multi-drug efflux pumps forcing out a lot many drugs. Hence the need to develop an alternative strategy is very critical for therapeutic success. The book describes all these scenarios in two subsequent volumes of the title. Volume-1 includes the naturally derived antimicrobial remedies/strategies. The Volume-2 of the same title incorporates the chemical and advanced nanomaterial based strategies along with sustainable antimicrobial strategies viz. use of probiotics and photodynamic therapy. I would like to thank the authors for their dedicated effort and the publishers in converting that effort into a reality. I am sure that the information will be very useful for Clinicians as well as Microbiologists.