Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105, 11945–11950 (2008)

A compound that inhibits the production of ATP, the primary energy carrier in cells, could make treating tuberculosis a little easier, report Kevin Pethe at the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases in Chromos, Singapore, and his colleagues. The disease-causing bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis can evade treatment by entering into a quiescent, non-dividing state that is resistant to current therapies.

Pethe and his team found that ATP levels in these bacteria are five- to sixfold lower than normal, but that quiescent M. tuberculosis does still require ATP to survive. They reasoned that this could render the microbe particularly susceptible to drugs that inhibit ATP synthesis. And, as it turns out, one such inhibitor that acts in a dose-dependent manner, R207910, kills quiescent M. tuberculosis at levels that don't kill other cells.