HspX knock-out in Mycobacterium tuberculosis leads to shorter antibiotic treatment and lower relapse rate in a mouse model--a potential novel therapeutic target.

Effective global tuberculosis control is hindered by the need for prolonged chemotherapy which leads to poor patient compliance. Therefore novel drug targets that shorten the duration of chemotherapy and reduce disease relapse rates are highly desirable. We have previously shown that HspX, an alpha-crystallin-like protein, is associated with growth suppression of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in mouse models. We determined to evaluate hspX as a novel target for controlling M. tuberculosis growth in combination with traditional antibiotic therapy in the Cornell mouse model. The hspX deletion mutant (ΔhspX) was used as a model of potential hspX inhibition. Normal BALB/c mice were infected with ΔhspX or the wild type (WT) strain. Three weeks after infection, the mice were treated with rifampicin, isoniazid and pyrazinamide for 14 weeks followed by 8 weeks of hydrocortisone. The effect of chemotherapy was measured by organ bacterial counts and the relapse rate. Antibiotic treatment of mice infected with ΔhspX resulted in faster visceral clearance; organs were disease free 8 weeks post-treatment for ΔhspX infection compared to 14 weeks for the WT strain. Disease relapse rate was significantly lower in ΔhspX infection (60.7%) compared to WT infection (92.6%). HspX may be a promising therapeutic target in combination with traditional antibiotic therapy to shorten the length of treatment and reduce disease relapse.

Persister populations of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in sputum that grow in liquid but not on solid culture media.

OBJECTIVES: Can the characteristics of persisters in cultures of Mycobacterium tuberculosis also be found in bacilli from the sputum of pulmonary tuberculosis patients? The objective of this study was to explore whether the ability of persisters to grow in liquid but not on solid culture media, as in 100 day static cultures, can also be found in bacilli in sputum. METHODS: Serial dilutions of homogenized sputum obtained from patients before or during the first week of treatment were inoculated into broths to estimate the probable number of organisms and onto plates to give colony counts. RESULTS: Cultures in broths grew slowly to reach a maximal count at 12 weeks of probable numbers about 10-fold higher than the colony counts on plates, which did not grow beyond the initial count at 3-4 weeks. No such excess growth in liquid medium was found with control log-phase cultures. CONCLUSIONS: About 90% of the bacilli in sputum are persisters that can grow in liquid media but not on solid plates.

Prevention of drug resistance by combined drug treatment of tuberculosis.

Treatment with a combination of anti-tuberculosis drugs is thought to work by the first drug killing mutants resistant to the second drug, while the second drug kills those resistant to the first drug. Combined treatment has been remarkably successful in preventing the emergence of resistance during the treatment of tuberculosis. This success has led to the introduction of multi-drug treatment for leprosy, HIV infections and cancer. Its success in tuberculosis depends on a number of conditions such as the chromosomal nature of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the absence of plasmids carrying resistance factors as well as the manner in which the bacterial population in tuberculosis does not come into contact with other potentially resistant bacteria. For multi-drug treatment to be effective in preventing resistance, the drugs must be sufficiently active so that each can inhibit all the bacteria in lesions. There must also be effective post-antibiotic lags in growth restarting to prevent growth between doses. Special bacterial populations that are drug tolerant or survive drug action unusually successfully are also a potential source of resistance.

Optimizing outpatient serial sputum colony counting for studies of tuberculosis treatment in resource-poor settings.

Serial Sputum Colony Counting (SSCC) is an important technique in clinical trials of new treatments for tuberculosis (TB). Quantitative cultures on selective Middlebrook agar are used to calculate the rate of bacillary elimination from sputum collected from patients at different time points during the first 2 months of therapy. However, the procedure can be complicated by high sample contamination rates. This study, conducted in a resource-poor setting in Malawi, assessed the ability of different antifungal drugs in selective agar to reduce contamination. Overall, 229 samples were studied and 15% to 27% were contaminated. Fungal organisms were particularly implicated, and samples collected later in treatment were at particular risk (P < 0.001). Amphotericin B (AmB) is the standard antifungal drug used on SSCC plates at a concentration of 10 mg/ml. On selective Middlebrook 7H10 plates, AmB at 30 mg/ml reduced sample contamination by 17% compared with AmB at 10 mg/ml. The relative risk of contamination using AmB at 10 mg/ml was 1.79 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.25 to 3.55). On Middlebrook 7H11 plates, a combination of AmB at 10 mg/ml and carbendazim at 50 mg/ml was associated with 10% less contamination than AmB at 30 mg/ml. The relative risk of contamination with AmB at 30 mg/ml was 1.79 (95% CI, 1.01 to 3.17). Improved antifungal activity was accompanied by a small reduction in bacillary counts, but this did not affect modeling of bacillary elimination. In conclusion, a combination of AmB and carbendazim optimized the antifungal activity of selective media for growth of TB. We recommend this method to reduce contamination rates and improve SSCC studies in African countries where the burden of TB is highest.

Effects of low incubation temperatures on the bactericidal activity of anti-tuberculosis drugs.

OBJECTIVES: to explore the effect of low incubation temperatures and the consequent slowing of bacterial metabolism on the bactericidal action of anti-tuberculosis drugs against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. METHODS: counting of surviving bacteria during exposure of static cultures to 1 mg/L isoniazid, 2 mg/L rifampicin, 0.5 or 2 mg/L TMC207 and 40 or 160 mg/L pyrazinamide, usually for periods of 21 days at temperatures of 37, 25, 22, 19, 16 or 8°C. RESULTS: the bactericidal activities of isoniazid and rifampicin were progressively reduced at 25 and 22°C, and were minimal at lower temperatures. TMC207 was immediately bactericidal at 37°C, in contrast to the early static phase reported with log phase cultures, and showed less change in activity as incubation temperatures were reduced than did rifampicin or isoniazid. Pyrazinamide was more bactericidal when incubation temperatures were reduced below 37°C and when the static seed cultures were most dormant. CONCLUSIONS: these results can be explained by the surmise that at low temperatures bacterial energy is at a low level with only just sufficient ATP to maintain homeostasis, making the bacteria more susceptible to the blocking of ATP synthesis by TMC207. Insufficient ATP at low temperature would also hinder the export of pyrazinoic acid, the toxic product of the pro-drug pyrazinamide, from the mycobacterial cell by an inefficient efflux pump that requires energy.

Bactericidal activity of the diarylquinoline TMC207 against Mycobacterium tuberculosis outside and within cells.

The bactericidal activities of the diarylquinoline TMC207 in a liquid culture medium started with a bacteriostatic phase lasting about 7 days and then continued with a dose-related bactericidal phase. In comparison, its intra-cellular activity in primary mouse peritoneal macrophages (PM) and in the J774 macrophage-like cell line had little or no static phase so that the bactericidal kill was evident by 5-7 days presumably due to low bacterial ATP levels. Bactericidal activities in the three systems were compared by estimating the rate of bacterial killing (K) during exposure to 0.12-1.0 µg/ml TMC207 which were similar at, -0.35 in the J774 cells and -0.27 in mouse PM (p = 0.6) with each lower than -0.11 in extra-cellular cultures (p < 0.001) and [2] the TMC207 concentration at the intersection between the curve relating cfu count to TMC207 concentration and the cfu count at day-0, defined as the static concentration. Static concentrations were 0.22 µg/ml for extra-cellular cultures, 0.17 µg/ml for mouse PM and 0.06 µg/ml for J774 cells, significantly lower than the extra-cellular value (p < 0.001). Thus, the intra-cellular activity of TMC207 is clearly greater than its extra-cellular activity mainly because the preliminary static phase was a shorter or absent.

Examining the basis of isoniazid tolerance in nonreplicating Mycobacterium tuberculosis using transcriptional profiling.

BACKGROUND: Understanding how growth state influences Mycobacterium tuberculosis responses to antibiotic exposure provides a window into drug action during patient chemotherapy. In this article, we describe the transcriptional programs mediated by isoniazid (INH) during the transition from log-phase to nonreplicating bacilli, from INH-sensitive to INH-tolerant bacilli respectively, using the Wayne model. RESULTS: INH treatment did not elicit a transcriptional response from nonreplicating bacteria under microarophilic conditions (NRP2), unlike the induction of a robust and well-characterized INH signature in log-phase bacilli. CONCLUSION: The differential regulation (between drug-free NRP2 and log-phase bacilli) of genes directly implicated in INH resistance could not account for the abrogation of INH killing in nongrowing bacilli. Thus, factors affecting the requirement for mycolic acids and the redox status of bacilli are likely responsible for the reduction in INH efficacy. We speculate on additional mechanisms revealed by transcriptome analysis that might account for INH tolerance.

A new antituberculosis drug that selectively kills nonmultiplying Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

An important report by Bryk et al. in this issue of Cell Host & Microbe describes the properties of a rhodanine prodrug active against nonmultiplying Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). Considering the tolerance of nonreplicating Mtb to most currently available agents, such a drug could be a major addition to our antituberculosis arsenal and would greatly benefit control of the disease.

Assessment of the Efficacy of New Anti-Tuberculosis Drugs.

The pathology of tuberculosis in humans starts with an initial Ghon focus in the lungs followed by transmission of bacilli though the blood and lymph to other regions in the lungs and to other organs. While these bacilli usually lie latent without causing further disease, some 10% start foci of adult type disease usually starting in the sub-apical regions of the lungs. Bacilli multiply, killing tissue by caseation and then forming colonies within the caseum. Cavities form connecting to the air in whose walls vigorous bacillary multiplication occurs. The history of the development of anti-tuberculosis chemotherapy is described, starting with the use of multi-drug regimens to prevent the emergence of drug resistance and continuing with the shortening of the treatment period to 6 months by the incorporation in the regimens of rifampicin and pyrazinamide, which are the two drug responsible for bactericidal activity during treatment. Prospects for further shortening of treatment rest with the introduction of higher dosage with rifamycins and with new anti-tuberculosis drugs. These new drugs include the 8 methoxyfluoroquinolones moxifloxacin and gatifloxacin which inhibit topoisomerases and protein formation, the diarylquinoline TM-207 which inhibits the mycobacterial ATP synthase and thus energy formation, the nitroimidazopyran PA-824 and the closely related OPC-676832 which are pro-drugs with uncertain modes of action and the pyrrole SQ-109, a cell wall inhibitor. Anti-tuberculosis drugs have widely variable pharmacokinetic characteristics but as they work efficiently together, it is unnecessary to match these when giving drug combinations. The effects of drug-drug interactions are usually small though the interactions with anti-retroviral drugs can pose problems. Dose sizes have usually been chosen to minimize side effects while retaining activity and thus tend to have low therapeutic margins, the exception being the margin of about 20 for isoniazid. The role of high plasma binding, important in limiting the efficacy of rifamycins, is uncertain for the newer drugs. Post antibiotic effects are vital to the prevention of drug resistance and need exploration for new drugs. The main aims of current drug development are (1) to shorten treatment, and (2) to make it more convenient, by for instance using widely intermittent regimens. The current techniques for measuring efficacy during drug development start with in vitro models, including the Hu/Coates models, which should contain bacterial populations resembling the bacterial persisters in lesions that are responsible for the long duration of treatment. The next stage is the mouse model of the chemotherapy of established tuberculosis, which has proved remarkably useful in assessing the value of the different drugs. The main problem in clinical assessment arises from the use of relapse after treatment as the main end-point, and the consequent need for very large numbers of patients required to provide measurable relapse rates in final phase III licensing studies. For this reason, surrogate studies are necessary in phase II which require much smaller numbers of patients. The first such investigations are phase IIA studies of early bactericidal activity which establish whether the drug given alone has bactericidal activity on cavitary bacilli and which can estimate the minimal effective dose of the drug, useful for decisions of dose size. The next step should be phase IIB studies which measure the rate of elimination of viable bacilli in sputum during the initial 8-weeks of treatment with various combinations of the new drug with established drugs. Measurement can be as (1) the proportion of patients with positive sputum at the end of the 8-weeks period, the easiest method but the least sensitive, or (2) as the speed with which sputum cultures become negative in a survival analysis, or (3) as the mean regression in modeling of serial sputum collections colony counts (SSCC). The relation between these surrogate estimates and the amoun of treatment shortening that can be obtained has still to be worked out.

The early bactericidal activities of rifampin and rifapentine in pulmonary tuberculosis.

RATIONALE: Comparison of the early bactericidal activity (EBA) of rifapentine and its pharmacokinetics with those of rifampin to determine the cause of poor clinical response and regrowth between doses, leading to rifamycin monoresistance at relapse. OBJECTIVES: Determination of the dose size of rifapentine that gives sufficient drug exposure to prevent regrowth. METHODS: EBA study over initial 5 days of treatment of 123 patients, half at Durban and half at Cape Town, who received single rifapentine doses of 300, 600, 900, or 1,200 mg rifapentine or five daily doses of 150, 300, or 600 mg rifampin, with a pharmacokinetic study on 58 patients measuring standard parameters for each dose size of rifamycin and their desacetyl metabolites. RESULTS: The EBAs for both rifamycins were similar, with a linear relationship to log dose at lower doses and a curvilinear response at higher doses giving a plateau at 1,136 mg rifapentine. The area under the concentration-time curve (AUC) divided by the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) agreed well for both rifamycins on the assumption that the only free 2% of free rifapentine and the 14% of free rifampin after plasma binding were active in the lesions. CONCLUSIONS: Only the free proportions of the rifamycins were active in lesions. From consideration of the pulse size and the duration of the postantibiotic lag, a 1,200-mg dose of rifapentine seemed necessary to improve response and to prevent regrowth between doses, and hence rifamycin monoresistance.

The diagnosis and therapy of tuberculosis during the past 100 years.

Methods for the radiographic diagnosis of tuberculosis have improved from simple fluoroscopy to computerized tomography. Although direct smear examination is still the most widely used bacteriological method of diagnosis, cultural methods with selective liquid media are sensitive and rapid. The use of antituberculosis drugs has changed tuberculosis from a disease with about a 50% mortality, treated by measures to collapse the affected lung lesions and by rest for the patient, to a condition successfully curable by chemotherapy. Key steps in the development of modern chemotherapy regimens were the demonstrations in clinical trials that (1) streptomycin was effective; (2) combination of drugs prevented the emergence of drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis; (3) chemotherapy under domiciliary conditions was effective and did not put family members at risk of infection; (4) patient compliance could be assisted by fully supervised intermittent regimens, or more effectively, by (5) shortening treatment by the introduction of rifampin and pyrazinamide, the two most potent sterilizing drugs, into the regimens. Regimens were divided into an initial intensive phase, while bacterial populations were high, and a longer continuation phase to complete sterilization. Pyrazinamide was shown to sterilize only in the intensive phase. The treatment of nonpulmonary tuberculosis followed the same plan, but when bacterial populations are low, fewer drugs are required in combination.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis from chronic murine infections that grows in liquid but not on solid medium.

BACKGROUND: Old, stationary cultures of Mycobacterium tuberculosis contain a majority of bacteria that can grow in broth cultures but cannot grow on solid medium plates. These may be in a non-replicating, dormant growth phase. We hypothesised that a similar population might be present in chronic, murine tuberculosis. METHODS: Estimates of the numbers of viable M. tuberculosis, strain H37Rv, in the spleens and lungs of mice in a 7-day acute infection and in a 10-month chronic infection were made by conventional plate counts and, as broth counts, by noting presence or absence of growth in serial replicate dilutions in liquid medium. RESULTS: Plate and broth counts in 6 mice gave similar mean values in the acute infection, 7 days after infection. However, the broth counts were much higher in 36 mice with a chronic infection at 10 months. Broth counts averaged 5.290 log10 cfu /organ from spleens and 5.523 log10 cfu/organ from lungs, while plate counts were 3.858 log10 cfu/organ from spleens and 3.662 log10 cfu/organ from lungs, indicating that the total bacterial population contained only 3.7% bacilli in spleens and 1.4% bacilli in lungs, capable of growth on plates. CONCLUSION: The proportion growing on plates might be a measure of the "dormancy" of the bacilli equally applicable to cultural and animal models.

Predictive in vitro models of the sterilizing activity of anti-tuberculosis drugs.

Sterilizing drugs kill Mycobacterium tuberculosis that persists during chemotherapy. Predictive models should mimic the conditions causing persistence in the lesions of cavitary disease, and should grade current anti-tuberculosis drugs according to their sterilizing activity determined in clinical trials. Models should start with old, stationary cultures grown micro-aerophilically. In these, persistent bacilli occur in different populations in which there is no appreciable cell division. Population 1. Grows in liquid culture medium but not on solid medium. Killed by rifampicin. Population 2. Grows on solid culture medium. Killed by rifampicin. Population 3. Grows in liquid medium but not on solid medium. Tolerant of rifampicin. Population 4. Bacilli from Cornell model mice, after treatment with pyrazinamide and isoniazid, cannot grow in liquid or on solid culture medium. Some of these populations are incorporated in models which start with 100-day liquid medium cultures. In model 1 (population 2) the new drug is added and colony counted after 7 days incubation. In models 2 and 3, 100 mg/L rifampicin is added to the 100-day culture when the bacilli lose their ability to grow on solid culture medium (population 3). After re-suspension in rifampicin-free liquid medium for 7 days, the bacilli recover growth on solid medium, when a colony count is done. The new drug is added during incubation with rifampicin in model 3 and at the start of recovery in drug-free medium in model 2. Models 1 and 3 grade isoniazid, rifampicin and pyrazinamide according to their sterilizing activity determined by clinical trials.

The search for new sterilizing anti-tuberculosis drugs.

To be of use in the control of tuberculosis, any new drug must be capable of shortening the duration of treatment by accelerating sterilizing activity, that is the rate at which Mycobacterium tuberculosis is killed in the lesions. The most difficult to kill are the extra-cellular bacilli in cavities. Persistence during therapy arises because there is a proportion of slowly metabolising bacilli (persisters) in the cavitary bacterial population at the start of treatment. Bacterial growth is slowed by low oxygen tension, quorum sensing and old age, but probably not by cellular immunity, since there are few professional phagocytic cells in cavities. The degree of phenotypic resistance to the bactericidal action of drugs can go through several stages: (i) the non-replicating stages 1 and 2 of micro-aerophilic adaptation, described by Wayne; (ii) a "tolerant" population that survives exposure to high rifampicin concentrations and is capable of growth in liquid medium but not on solid medium; and (iii) a population found in the sterile state of Cornell model mice which cannot grow initially in either liquid or solid medium but will eventually cause re-activation of tuberculosis. In all of these stages the bacilli are phenotypically resistant; there is no selection for genomic drug resistance. Rifampicin and pyrazinamide are the two drugs largely responsible for sterilizing activity during current treatment. Pyrazinamide is unique amongst anti-tuberculosis drugs in having no genomic site of action and having greater bactericidal activity as bacillary metabolism slows down; it is remarkably effective in human disease. The development of a new drug with a similar mode of activity might be very fruitful, especially if there were no need for an acid environment. Current methods advocated for drug development pass through a number of complex stages: choice of a genomic target, development of an in vitro assay, high throughput screening and identification of lead compounds, often with scaling up of synthesis of the molecule and preliminary studies of toxicity and animal pharmacology before tests are done for sterilizing activity. If the drug is not good at sterilizing, all of this initial work will be largely wasted as it would only have a very limited role in the treatment of MDR disease. One of the most important steps necessary is the development of rapid and simple tests to screen for sterilizing activity. Of tests currently available, none of those employing mice seem adequate, though a screen using a streptomycin dependent Mycobacterium tuberculosis seems the most hopeful. A set of in vitro tests is described. There is an urgent need to develop these tests further since the factors slowing growth are closer to those in tuberculous cavities than in mouse models. They have the advantages of simplicity and require only small amounts of a new molecule.