Selective toxicity 3-lactams

The origin of the success of fl-lactam antibiotics mainly results from the extreme low toxicity of these compounds with regard to human beings. In other words, P-lactam antibiotics have a highly selective toxicity for bacteria since they do not interfere with human metabolism, but inhibit the formation of the cell wall of growing bacteria. 

Chemotherapeutic treatments rely dominantly on selective toxicity approaches targetted at killing the invader without killing the host. Albert distinguishes three selectivity principles favourable differences in drug distribution, favourable differences in biochemistry and favourable differences in cell structure. Certainly the most seducing of them are the differences in biochemistry. A practical application is the inhibition of the bacterial cell wall construction by p-lactam antibiotics, the activity is absolutely restricted to the bacteria s, just because similar cell walls do not exist in mammals. 

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