Quinoline: a promising antitubercular target.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a global public health problem in recent years. TB originated mainly from various strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is a highly infectious and chronic disease with high infection rate since ancient times. Since the last 50 years, the same long-duration, multidrug treatment plan is being followed for the treatment of tuberculosis. Due to the development of resistance to conventional antibiotics there is a need for new therapeutic strategies to combat M. tuberculosis. Subsequently, there is an urgent need for the development of new drug molecules with newer targets and with an alternative mechanism of action. Among hetrocyclic compounds, quinoline compounds are important privileged structure in medicinal chemistry, are widely used as "parental" compounds to synthesize molecules with medical benefits, especially with anti-malarial and anti-microbial activities. Certain, quinoline-based compounds, also show effective anti-TB activity. This broad spectrum of biological and biochemical activities has been further facilitated by the synthetic versatility of quinoline, which allows the generation of a large number of structurally diverse derivatives. To pave the way for future research, there is a need to collect the latest information in this promising area. In the present review, we have collated published reports on this versatile core to provide an insight so that its full therapeutic potential can be utilized for the treatment tuberculosis. It is hoped that, this review will be helpful for new thoughts in the quest for rational designs of more active and less toxic quinoline-based anti-TB drugs.