The global tuberculosis crisis urgently demands new, efficacious, orally available drugs with the potential to shorten and simplify the long and complex treatments for drug-sensitive and drug-resistant disease. Clofazimine, a riminophenazine used for many years to treat leprosy, demonstrates efficacy in animal models of tuberculosis via a novel mode of action. However, clofazimine's physicochemical and pharmacokinetic properties contribute to side effects that limit its use; in particular, an extremely long half-life and propensity for tissue accumulation together with clofazimine's dye properties leads to unwelcome skin discoloration. We recently conducted a systematic structure-activity study of more than 500 riminophenazine analogs for anti-Mycobacterium tuberculosisactivity. We describe here the characteristics of 12 prioritized compounds in more detail. The new riminophenazine analogs demonstrated enhancedin vitroactivity compared to clofazimine against replicatingM. tuberculosisH37Rv, as well as panels of drug-sensitive and drug-resistant clinical isolates. The new compounds demonstrate at least equivalent activity compared to clofazimine against intracellularM. tuberculosisand, in addition, most of them were active against nonreplicatingM. tuberculosis. Eleven of these more water-soluble riminophenazine analogs possess shorter half-lives than clofazimine when dosed orally to mice, suggesting that they may accumulate less. Most importantly, the nine compounds that progressed to efficacy testing demonstrated inhibition of bacterial growth in the lungs that is superior to the activity of an equivalent dose of clofazimine when administered orally for 20 days in a murine model of acute tuberculosis. The efficacy of these compounds, along with their decreased potential for accumulation and therefore perhaps also for tissue discoloration, warrants further study.

Clofazimine has been repurposed for the treatment of tuberculosis, especially for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). To test the susceptibility to clofazimine of Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates, MICs of clofazimine were determined using the microplate alamarBlue assay (MABA) method for 80 drug-resistant isolates and 10 drug-susceptible isolates for comparison. For five clofazimine-resistant strains isolated from previously treated pre-extensively drug-resistant TB (pre-XDR-TB) and XDR-TB patients without prior exposure to clofazimine or bedaquiline, clofazimine MICs were ≥1.2 μg/ml. Four isolates with cross-resistance to bedaquiline had Rv0678 mutations. The other isolate with no resistance to bedaquiline had an Rv1979c mutation. This study adds to a recent study showing that 6.3% of MDR-TB patients without prior clofazimine or bedaquiline exposure harbored isolates with Rv0678 mutations, which raises concern that preexisting resistance to these drugs may be associated with prior TB treatment. Furthermore, we propose a tentative breakpoint of 1.2 μg/ml for clofazimine resistance using the MABA method. More-widespread surveillance and individualized testing for clofazimine and bedaquiline resistance, together with assessment of their clinical usage, especially among previously treated and MDR-TB patients, are warranted.

This study is aimed at chemotherapy for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), mainly to develop new anti-TB drugs to kill Mycobacterium tuberculosis , a microorganism with strong drug resistance. In this study, the structure of a potent antituberculosis compound, bedaquiline (BDQ), was optimized to generate a new compound, sudapyridine (WX-081).

The riminophenazine agent clofazimine (CFZ) is repurposed as an important component of the new short-course multidrug-resistant tuberculosis regimen and significantly shortens first-line regimen for drug-susceptible tuberculosis in mice. However, CFZ use is hampered by its unwelcome skin discoloration in patients. A new riminophenazine analog TBI-166 was selected as a potential next-generation antituberculosis riminophenazine following an extensive medicinal chemistry effort. Here, we evaluated the activity of TBI-166 against Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its potential to accumulate and discolor skin. In vitro activity of TBI-166 against both drug-sensitive and drug-resistant M. tuberculosis is more potent than that of CFZ. Spontaneous mutants resistant to TBI-166 were found at a frequency of 2.3x10^-7 in wild strains of M. tuberculosis. TBI-166 demonstrates at least equivalent activity compared to CFZ against intracellular M. tuberculosis and in low-dose aerosol infection models of acute and chronic murine tuberculosis. Most importantly, TBI-166 causes less skin discoloration than CFZ despite its higher tissue accumulation. The efficacy of TBI-166, along with its decreased skin pigmentation, warrants further study and potential clinical use.