Drug resistance is increasing among a variety of human pathogenic microorganisms such as Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumaniii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacter spp. (currently dubbed the 'ESKAPE' pathogens), and has emerged as one of the most important clinical challenges of this century. Increased general awareness and fear of these pathogens means there is a growing demand for research to tackle the threat of multidrug resistance. Documenting the latest research in the field, this book discusses current and promising activities to discover new antimicrobials in five key areas: molecular genetics and systems microbiology; synthetic, computational chemistry and chemoinformatics; High Throughput Screening (HTS); non-vertebrate model hosts; and light- and nano-based technologies.

1. Emerging Antimicrobial Drug-discovery Strategies: an Evolving Necessity
2. The Antibiotic Crisis
3. Structure, Genetic Regulation, Physiology and Function of the AcrAB-TolC Efflux Pump of Escherichia coli and Salmonella
4. Small-molecule Efflux Pump Inhibitors from Natural Products as a Potential Source of Antimicrobial Agents
5. Fungal Efflux-mediated Resistance: from Targets to Inhibitors
6. Vacuolar ATPase: a Model Proton Pump for Antifungal Drug Discovery
7. Drug Tolerance, Persister Cells and Drug Discovery
8. Inhibition of Quorum Sensing as a Novel Antimicrobial Strategy
9. Filamentous Temperature-sensitive Mutant Z (FtsZ) Protein as an Antibacterial Target
10. Lysostaphin: a Silver Bullet for Staph
11. Strategies to Identify Modified Ribosomally Synthesized Antimicrobials
12. Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship-based Discovery of Antimicrobial Peptides Active Against Multidrug-resistant Bacteria
13. Acetyl-CoA Carboxylase as a Target for Antibacterial Development
14. Underexploited Targets in Lipopolysaccharide Biogenesis for the Design of Antibacterials
15. Predicting and Dissecting High-order Molecular Complexity by Information-driven Biomolecular Docking
16. Antifungals and Antifungal Drug Discovery
17. Pathosystematic Studies and the Rational Design of Antifungal Interventions
18. In Vivo High-throughput Antimicrobial Discovery Screens Utilizing Caenorhabditis elegans as an Alternative Host
19. Drosophila melanogaster as a Versatile Model for the Discovery of Drugs Effective against Human Microbe-induced Infection and Pathology
20. Antimicrobial Photosensitizers: Harnessing the Power of Light to Treat Infections
21. Nanoparticle Platforms for Antimicrobial Therapy
22. Antimicrobial Activity of Carbon Nanotubes