Elucidating iron transport mechanisms in tuberculosis bug identifies new TB drug targets

It is pathetically true that Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of TB is still thriving the test of scientific interventions despite affecting almost one -third of the worlds’ population. The fact that it takes approximately one human life every 15 second somewhere in the world is an unfortunate death statistics unmatched by any other microbe.

Researchers from India led by Professor Seyed E Hasnain of the Institute of Life Sciences, at the University of Hyderabad, India have worked out the mechanism of iron uptake system of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is considered to be one of the important drug targets.

Iron acquisition and regulation in intracellular pathogens especially mycobacterium is a central survival mechanism working at the interface of host-pathogen interactions and is, therefore, a promising target for intervention. However, the bottleneck so far in targeting this important survival strategy was the absence of understanding of the mechanism of iron acquisition and transport in mycobacterium.

This research, appearing in the May 7 issue of the open-access journal PLoS ONE, has accomplished this challenging task by employing various in vitro and in vivo methods to elucidate how the bacterium that causes TB can import iron from the cell where it lives. It is important to know how the TB bacillus survives in the low iron environment of the human host by making use of its unique iron transport machinery. With this discovery of iron transport machinery in mycobacterium, the field has been made open for targeting this pathway for therapeutic interventions by development of new drugs.