From Siloed Methods to Integrated Pipelines: Coupled Approaches Driving Next-Generation Antibiotic Discovery

Antibiotic resistance poses a growing threat to public health, yet limited innovation and development of new antibacterial agents continue to hinder antibiotic discovery. Although only a few novel antibiotic candidates have passed clinical trials and reached the market, resistance continues to grow faster than antibiotic development. Despite numerous advances in drug development, using these technologies in isolation has constrained antibiotic discovery. This review examines how advanced technologies integrate into antibiotic drug discovery. It highlights a coupled approach (co-applied technologies) as an innovative strategy to mitigate the limitations of single approaches and accelerate lead discovery. By highlighting each technology and reviewing its potential applications, this strategy opens new routes and methods that can yield novel chemical scaffolds and new mechanisms of action (i.e., weakening microbial resistance), addressing the challenges posed by increasing global resistance and shortcomings in current antibiotic development. The review also addresses the challenges and barriers to discovering next-generation antibiotics. It also encourages researchers to implement platforms that combine coupled approaches and technologies, such as computational, genomic, biochemical, and structural tools, to replenish the next-generation antibiotic discovery pipeline and address the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis. To strengthen global efforts and lessen the AMR crisis, an innovative antibiotic discovery strategy is necessary.