International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents (Elsevier) published a paper by the Russian-Bulgarian team of authors led by Igor Mokrousov "In vitro activity of halicin against phylogenetically and phenotypically different Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains."
In 2019, the compound SU3327 was named "halicin" after the AI system Hal from Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was initially developed to treat diabetes (but without success). However, researchers from MIT, using in silico deep learning, subsequently discovered that halicin may be a broad-spectrum antibiotic. The compound demonstrated broad antibacterial activity due to its unique mechanism of action, but against Mycobacterium tuberculosis, it was tested only on the laboratory reference strain H37Rv. In a pilot study by Mokrousov and co-authors, the effect of halicin was examined not only against H37Rv but also against phylogenetically distant, drug-susceptible, and multidrug-resistant clinical strains.
The International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents is the official publication of the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. The journal is ranked in the first quartile of Web of Science (88th percentile), with an impact factor of 4.6. Its acceptance rate is 15%.