Enlisting plants in the battle for new antibacterial compounds

A rise in antibacterial drug resistance comes at a time when our once reliable sources of antibacterial natural products, bacteria and fungi, are failing us. The search for new drugs to fight pathogens has led to a range of innovative approaches and includes screening organisms which have developed evolutionary adaptions to prevent bacterial attack. The discovery of antibacterial phytochemicals from plants can be achieved using an activity-guided platform involving biological and chemical pre-screening, compound isolation, structure elucidation, and the direct testing of isolated compounds. Challenges include the clean isolation of natural products, avoiding the rediscovery of known compounds, toxicity, and poor levels of activity.