IMB-XMA0038, a new inhibitor targeting aspartate-semialdehyde dehydrogenase of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

The emergence of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) constitutes a major challenge to TB control programs. There is an urgent need to develop effective anti-TB drugs with novel mechanisms of action. Aspartate-semialdehyde dehydrogenase (ASADH) is the second enzyme in the aspartate metabolic pathway. The absence of the pathway in humans and the absolute requirement of aspartate in bacteria make ASADH a highly attractive drug target. In this study, we used ASADH coupled with Escherichia coli type III aspartate kinase (LysC) to establish a high-throughput screening method to find new anti-TB inhibitors. IMB-XMA0038 was identified as an inhibitor of MtASADH with an IC₅₀ value of 0.59 μg/mL through screening. The interaction between IMB-XMA0038 and MtASADH was confirmed by surface plasmon resonance (SPR) assay and molecular docking analysis. Furthermore, IMB-XMA0038 was found to inhibit various drug-resistant MTB strains potently with minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of 0.25-0.5 μg/mL. The conditional mutant strain MTB::asadh cultured with different concentrations of inducer (10⁻⁵ or 10⁻¹ μg/mL pristinamycin) resulted in a maximal 16 times difference in MICs. At the same time, IMB-XMA0038 showed low cytotoxicity in vitro and vivo. In mouse model, it encouragingly declined the MTB colony forming units (CFU) in lung by 1.67 log10 dosed at 25 mg/kg for 15 days. In conclusion, our data demonstrate that IMB-XMA0038 is a promising lead compound against drug-resistant tuberculosis.