Potential of FTIR-Spectroscopy for Drugs Screening against Helicobacter pylori

Helicobacter pylori colonizes the human stomach of half of the world’s population. The infection if not treated, persists through life, leading to chronic gastric inflammation, that may progress to severe diseases as peptic ulcer, gastric adenocarcinoma, and mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma. The first line of treatment, based on 7 to 21 days of two antibiotics associated with a proton pump inhibitor, is, however, already failing most due to patient non-compliance that leads to antibiotic resistance. It is, therefore, urgent to screen for new and more efficient antimicrobials against this bacterium. In this work, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was evaluated to screen new drugs against H. pylori, in rapid (between 1 to 6 h), and high-throughput mode and based on a microliter volume processes in relation to the agar dilution method. The reference H. pylori strains 26,695 and J99, were evaluated against a peptide-based antimicrobial and the clinical antibiotic clarithromycin, respectively. After optimization of the assay conditions, as the composition of the incubation mixture, the time of incubation, and spectral pre-processing, it was possible to reproducibly observe the effect of the drug on the bacterial molecular fingerprint as pointed by the spectra principal component analysis. The spectra, obtained from both reference strains, after its incubation with drugs concentrations lower than the MIC, presented peak ratios statistically different (p < 0.05) in relation to the bacteria incubated with drugs concentrations equal or higher to the MIC. It was possible to develop a partial least square regression model, enabling to predict from spectra of both bacteria strains, the drug concentration on the assay, with a high correlation coefficient between predicted and experimental data (0.91) and root square error of 40% of the minimum inhibitory concentration. All this points to the high potential of the technique for drug screening against this fastidious growth bacterium.