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Biodegradation: A Pharmaceutical Journey
Pharmaceuticals are essential to modern healthcare but increasingly represent a pervasive and biologically active class of environmental contaminants. Following administration, many drugs are incompletely metabolised in the human body and are excreted as parent compounds or active metabolites, subsequently entering municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Conventional treatment processes only partially remove many pharmaceuticals, resulting in chronic sub-therapeutic exposure of microbial communities which act as both functional agents of biodegradation and sensitive ecological targets. Such exposure alters microbial structure and function, reduces biotransformation capacity, promotes the persistence of recalcitrant compounds such as carbamazepine and diclofenac, and drives the selection and dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes. These effects may propagate across aquatic, terrestrial, agricultural, and food systems via treated effluents and biosolids, linking human medical practices to environmental and public health outcomes. By integrating Pharmaceutical science, wastewater engineering, microbiome ecology, and antimicrobial resistance research, this work frames pharmaceutical pollution as a closed-loop OneHealth challenge.
  • 34
  • 22 Jul 2026
Topic Review
Antibacterial Agents
Antibacterial agents constitute a family of chemical substances—whether naturally derived, semi-synthetic, or fully synthetic—that possess the capacity to destroy bacteria (bactericidal activity) or to inhibit their proliferation and reproduction (bacteriostatic activity). These agents function by selectively targeting essential bacterial structures or metabolic pathways that are either absent or sufficiently distinct from those of the host organism, thereby achieving selective toxicity [1]. The principal mechanisms of antibacterial action encompass the inhibition of bacterial cell wall synthesis, disruption of cell membrane integrity, interference with protein synthesis through ribosomal targeting, inhibition of nucleic acid metabolism via enzymes such as DNA gyrase and RNA polymerase, and blockade of essential metabolic pathways including folate biosynthesis [2]. Antibacterial agents are classified according to their chemical structure, spectrum of activity (narrow-spectrum agents targeting specific bacterial groups versus broad-spectrum agents active against diverse bacterial taxa), and mechanism of action [3]. The conceptual distinction between antibacterial agents and the broader category of antimicrobial agents lies in their specificity: while antimicrobial agents encompass substances active against all classes of pathogenic microorganisms including fungi, viruses, and protozoa, antibacterial agents are restricted exclusively to bacterial targets [4]. Within the context of bacterial resistance, antibacterial agents are further characterized by their susceptibility to resistance mechanisms harbored by pathogenic bacteria, including enzymatic degradation, efflux pump-mediated expulsion, target site modification, and reduced drug permeability [2].
  • 7
  • 22 Sep 2026
Topic Review
Antimicrobial Efficacy
Within microbial inactivation methods, antimicrobial efficacy is the capacity of a defined antimicrobial intervention—such as a chemical biocide, antimicrobial material, physical treatment, or biological agent—to inhibit microbial multiplication and/or to reduce the number of viable microorganisms under specified exposure conditions. It is an outcome-dependent property rather than an intrinsic synonym for the presence of antimicrobial activity: efficacy is defined only in relation to a target microorganism or microbial population, the magnitude and endpoint of the observed effect, and the controlled conditions of exposure, including agent concentration or intensity, contact time, temperature, growth state, inoculum, and test matrix [1][2]. The effect may be expressed as growth inhibition, loss of culturability, or microbial killing/inactivation, commonly quantified by minimum inhibitory or microbicidal concentrations, time–kill kinetics, or logarithmic reductions in viable counts [1][3]. Antimicrobial efficacy is therefore distinct from antimicrobial susceptibility, which characterizes the response of a microorganism to an agent under a defined test system, and from antimicrobial resistance, which denotes reduced susceptibility relative to an appropriate reference or interpretive framework. In the context of inactivation, a credible efficacy determination requires a specified microbial endpoint and standardized or otherwise explicitly described test conditions, because methodological variables directly affect the measured extent of microbial reduction [2][4].
  • 3
  • 23 Sep 2026
Topic Review
Antimicrobial Proteins
Antimicrobial proteins are proteinaceous components of innate host defense that directly impair the survival, growth, colonization, or infectivity of microorganisms. Within the taxonomy of antimicrobial peptides and activities, the term encompasses both relatively large proteins and their bioactive peptide products when these molecules possess intrinsic antimicrobial activity. Their targets include bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites, although the spectrum and magnitude of activity depend on the molecular structure of the protein, the target organism, and the local physicochemical environment [1][2]. Antimicrobial proteins act through diverse molecular mechanisms. These include disruption or permeabilization of microbial envelopes; enzymatic degradation of microbial structural components; sequestration of nutrients required for microbial growth, particularly metal ions; binding to microbial surface molecules; interference with intracellular microbial processes; and modulation of host immune responses that contribute to microbial control [2][3][4]. They are therefore distinguished from conventional low-molecular-weight antimicrobial drugs by their protein or peptide composition and by the frequent integration of direct microbicidal or microbiostatic effects with host-defense functions. Antimicrobial peptides constitute a structurally shorter subset of this broader proteinaceous defense system, whereas antimicrobial proteins may retain activity as intact macromolecules or release active peptide fragments after proteolytic processing [1][4].
  • 2
  • 23 Sep 2026
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