Characterizing phenotypes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and exploring anti-mycobacterial compounds through high content screening

Sammanfattning: Tuberculosis (TB), an airborne disease and one of the top 10 causes of death globally, is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). Current standard therapy for TB treatment includes multiple drugs for a period of at least 6 months. The long therapy duration is to sterilize a small sub-population of drug-tolerant bacteria, a characteristic related to biofilm formation, which otherwise responsible for disease relapse. On the other hand, because of such a long treatment period, patient adherence to therapy becomes difficult, which results in the emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) or, in worst cases, extensively drug-resistant (XDR)-TB. TB is primarily a disease of lungs and alveolar macrophages are one of the first host cell types to encounter Mtb following aerosol transmission. A well-established role of macrophages in immune defense is phagocytosis, but recent studies also demonstrated that upon interaction with large aggregates of microbes or cord-forming mycobacterial species, macrophages could produce extracellular traps known as macrophage extracellular traps (METs). METs have a DNA backbone with embeds histones and could trap a wide range of microorganisms, but may or may not be able to kill them. Natural products are always a promising starting point for drug discovery because of their wide range of activity. A large number of world’s population is still using extracts from different parts of plants as the primary source of medicines against diseases including TB. Today much effort is being invested by academia in screening campaigns that allows for fast discovery of new active compounds. Thanks to the use of automated technology such as automated microscopy or automated image analysis (known as high content screening, HCS) phenotypic drug discovery has become easier to perform. Therefore, the identification of highly effective compounds to combat infectious diseases like TB can be facilitated by the use of host-pathogen assays at the early stages of drug screening studies.This thesis describes the characterization and antibiotic sensitivity of different phenotypes of Mtb namely planktonic, cord-forming and biofilm-producing phenotypes that arise due to different culture conditions. The culture of Mtb with a high percentage of a detergent (Tween-80) and standing condition promoted planktonic phenotype while a culture with a low amount of Tween-80 and more aeration due to shaking promoted cording and biofilm phenotypes. Primary human macrophages upon interaction with the shaken culture of wild-type Mtb died by releasing METs. Whereas, the shaken cultures of early secreted antigenic target-6 (ESAT-6), an important virulence factor of Mtb, deletion mutant strain could not induce MET formation showing that the cord formation is related to virulence. Moreover, the biofilm phenotype of Mtb is more tolerant to two first-line antibiotics isoniazid (INH) and rifampicin (RIF) as compared to cording and planktonic phenotypes which demand a search of more effective TB therapy. A screening campaign based on a whole-cell assay using different ethanolic crude extracts of many African plants lead to the discovery of a hit, i.e., a chloroform fraction of Khaya senegalensis bark, which showed non-significant inhibition of intracellular growth of a virulent strain of Mtb was selected for further purification and evaluation. Lastly, we have also developed and validated an HCS assay to explore new compounds against intracellular Mtb in human macrophages. INH and RIF, which were found most effective in our system were used in a combination as a positive control to calculate a Z’ factor value, which confirmed our assay to be suitable for HCS.In conclusion, this thesis not only highlights the biology of TB infection, but also discusses the development of a pathophysiologically relevant assay that can be used in the identification of novel compound(s) that has either direct anti-mycobacterial activity (antibiotic), acts by stimulating the host cell immune mechanisms (immunomodulator) or acts by counteracting virulence factors (virulence blocker).