Luciferase Reporter Phage Assay For Anti Tuberculosis Screening: Current Status And Challenges

Tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious airborne disease caused by a bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). Emergence of multi drug resistant (MDR) and extensively drug resistance (XDR) among M. tuberculosis strains urged the situation to discovery novel anti TB antibiotics. Many assays were developed based on the whole cell and target, but each having some limitations. Being a slow grower as well as air borne pathogen, adopting suitable assay for anti TB screening is challenging. Here, we discussed about the employment of Luciferase Reporter Phage (LRP) assay for the screening of wide range of compounds against M. tuberculosis strains including drug sensitive and drug resistant strains. Literature articles published between 2006 to March 2020 in reputed journal were collected through searching web of science, pubmed and other sites.This review focus on the articles published on screening of extracts and compounds from natural products, synthetic compounds and nanoparticles from the year 2006 - March 2020 by using LRP assay. Among the whole cell assays, LRP assay provide the results in 72 hours and this assay can be used as preliminary identification of potential anti-TB compound. Hence, LRP assay is a rapid, simple and sensitive assay to screen natural molecules and synthetic compounds to determine their anti TB activity. However, limitations associated with mycobacteriophage entry into the mycobacterial cell need to be optimized to improve its sensitivity. Understanding the importance and advantages of employing LRP assay as an effective high throughput screening method helps in the significant screening of wide range of antimycobacterial agents in a relatively short time of incubation. This assay can effectively help in the development of new potential drug candidates against tuberculosis..