A Chemist’s Survey of Different Antibiotic Classes

More than 20 novel classes of antibiotics were produced between 1930 and 1962. Since then, only four new classes of antibiotics were marketed. Interestingly, none of these new classes is really novel: daptomycin, approved in 2000, was discovered in the early 1980s; linezolid, approved in 2000, derives from a synthetic lead discovered in the 1970s; pleuromutilins, approved in 2007, have been widely used for about 30 years in veterinary medicine; fidaxomicin, approved in 2011, was first reported in the 1970s. This chapter reviews the main classes of antibiotics in clinical use organized by their chemical structure. For each class, the natural or synthetic origin and a description of the chemical structure are presented. The mechanism of action and spectrum of activity are only briefly indicated as they are discussed more deeply in the subsequent chapters. A short summary of the early structure–activity relationships (SARs) leading to the most known derivatives is described followed by a short overview of the most recent analogous currently under clinical development [1–3].