Preface

Microbial diseases are one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Conventional antibiotics have undoubtedly rescued the world population from several life threatening infectious diseases since their development in the early 20th century. However, some pathogens have evolved mechanisms to evade the action of most commercially available drugs due to their indiscriminate and injudicious use. This has resulted in the emergence of one of the critical issues in modern biomedicine and healthcare regime that is the surfacing of multidrug resistant (MDR) pathogens. These MDR pathogens may emerge as completely incurable by the available antimicrobials in the near future. Innovation gap in novel antibiotic development has severely crippled the choices for treating microbial infections. The challenge of treating diseases caused by drug-resistant pathogens hence demands progress in the development of novel and potent alternative antimicrobial agents. Search for alternative strategies having irrefutable cellular targets that are counter-productive to resistance development has been in the prime center of attention of the scientific community. The putative antimicrobial agents under development have diverse chemical structures and novel mechanisms over the conventional antimicrobial agents rendering the pathogens with minimum scope to develop resistance. Novel alternative antimicrobial agents including phytochemicals and other natural strategies need to be collated on a unified podium enabling the academicians and upcoming researchers to develop unbiased knowledge on potent alternative antimicrobial agents to combat microbial infections.

“Recent Trends and the Future of Antimicrobial Agents” consists of twenty chapters in two separate volumes. Both the volumes incorporate current research and developments on various alternative approaches. The Volume-1 includes naturally derived antimicrobial remedies/strategies. The Volume-2 of the same title incorporates the chemical and advanced nanomaterial-based materials along with sustainable antimicrobial approaches such as probiotics and photodynamic therapy. In Volume-1, first five chapters deal with naturally derived antimicrobial compounds/agents. Natural products and their derivatives are reliable sources of useful drugs for varied structure, unique mode of action and most importantly minor side effects. Antimicrobial strategies that rely upon plant-based antimicrobials (PBAs), enzymes based and antibody-based antibacterial therapeutic approaches along with secondary metabolites from plant endophytes have been discussed in these chapters. As a novel natural source, marine microorganisms provide numerous bioactive metabolites which are reported as effective and promising sources of new antibiotics or drugs that can also act against MDR strains. Other than natural sources, synthetic organic moieties are also being explored as novel antimicrobial compounds. The most challenging resistance phenomena of recent years compelling medical professionals are diseases caused by protozoans like Plasmodium, fungi like Candida sp., MDR bacteria like Mycobacterium and even viruses that are evolving as mutated pathogens and warrant novel strategies to treat these deadly diseases. This book incorporates specific chapters that detail the history of drug development against Malaria and postulate novel therapeutic approaches towards antimalarial drugs. Emerging novel drugs effective against MDR-TB are discussed in a separate chapter. Recently, the world has been facing a threatening challenge by the emerging novel strains of viruses, including the present SARS-CoV2. Frequent mutations of the viral strains and growing resistance to the available antiviral drugs warrant the discovery of new drug targets and novel strategies to mitigate the deadly viral pandemic. Viruses use host genes for their proliferation. So, host factors co-modulate their functions and thus also could impact viral pathogenesis. This aspect of antiviral drug development is in its early phase. However, this field is believed to have immense potential for antiviral drug targeting. A chapter discusses this outlook regarding the host proteins' implications in viral biology and how they could be exploited for treating viral diseases. So, this book will provide a significantly expanded overview and updated research to a broader context regarding the development of alternative approaches against microbial infections. We believe that the book will cater to the professionals and learners in academia, industry and health services who aim to learn the most significant approaches towards alternatives to existing antimicrobial therapy.

Finally, we express our gratitude to Prof. (Dr.) Dhrubajyoti Chattopadhyay, Vice Chancellor, Sister Nivedita University, Kolkata, West Bengal who has always been an inspirational persona to the young scientific community. He has, with his profound knowledge of the subject, prudently intuited the importance of the work and kindly written the foreword of this edited book. We are also grateful to the Vice Chancellor, University of North Bengal, Darjeeling, for providing all necessary facilities and a conducive academic ambience, ensuring smooth completion of the book. We are extremely grateful to Fr. (Dr.) Lalit P. Tirkey, Principal, North Bengal St. Xavier’s College (NBSXC), Jalpaiguri for his enthusiastic support and encouragement for the completion of the project. Our sincere thanks go to all authors for their hard work and professionalism in making this book a reality. Their expertise in the contributed chapters is acknowledged and appreciated. Lastly, our appreciation goes to Bentham publisher, for generous assistance, constant support, and patience in materializing the book.