[Prospects for the development of new antituberculous drugs putting our hopes on new drug targets].

Worldwide, tuberculosis remains the most frequent and important infectious disease to cause morbidity and death. However, the development of new drugs for the treatment and prophylaxis of TB has been slow. Therefore, novel types of antituberculous drugs, which act on the unique drug targets in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, particularly the drug targets related to the establishment of mycobacterial dormancy in host's macrophages, are urgently needed. In this context, it should be noted that current antituberculous drugs mostly target the metabolic reactions and proteins which are essential for the growth of M. tuberculosis in extracellular milieus. It may also be promising to develop another type of drug that exerts an inhibitory action against bacterial virulence factors which cross talk and interfere with signaling pathways of M. tuberculosis-infected host immunocompetent cells such as lymphocytes, macrophages and NK cells, thereby changing the intracellular milieus favorable to intramacrophage survival and growth of infected bacilli. In this review article, I will describe recent approaches to identify and establish novel potential drug targets in M. tuberculosis, especially those related to mycobacterial virulence, dormancy, and cross-talk with cellular signaling pathways.