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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, July 2007, p. 2173-2179, Vol. 45, No. 7
0095-1137/07/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JCM.02351-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Comparative In Vitro Antimicrobial Activity of Tigecycline, a New Glycylcycline Compound, in Freshly Prepared Medium and Quality Control
Steven D. Brown* and
Maria M. Traczewski
The Clinical Microbiology Institute, 9725 SW Commerce Circle, Wilsonville, Oregon 97070
Received 20 November 2006/
Returned for modification 5 February 2007/
Accepted 1 May 2007

ABSTRACT
The in vitro spectra of activity of tigecycline and tetracycline
were determined for 2,490 bacterial isolates representing 50
different species or phenotypic groups. All isolates were tested
simultaneously by broth microdilution using freshly prepared
Mueller-Hinton broth and by disk diffusion. Portions of these
data were submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
in support of the sponsor's application for new drug approval.
In a separate study, MIC and disk diffusion quality control
ranges were determined. The tigecycline MICs at which 50%/90%
of bacteria were inhibited were (in µg/ml) as follows:
for
Streptococcus spp., 0.06/0.12; for
Moraxella catarrhalis,
0.06/0.12; for
Staphylococcus spp., 0.12/0.25; for
Enterococcus spp., 0.12/0.25; for
Listeria monocytogenes, 0.12/0.12; for
Neisseria meningitidis, 0.12/0.25; for
Haemophilus spp., 0.25/0.5;
for
Enterobacteriaceae, 0.05/2.0; for non-
Enterobacteriaceae,
0.5/8.0. Tigecycline was consistently more potent than tetracycline
against all species studied. The data from this study confirm
the FDA-approved MIC and disk diffusion breakpoints for tigecycline
for
Streptococcus spp. other than
Streptococcus pneumoniae,
enterococci, and
Enterobacteriaceae. Provisional breakpoints
for
Haemophilus spp. and
S. pneumoniae are proposed based on
the data from this study. The following MIC and/or disk diffusion
quality control ranges are proposed:
Staphylococcus aureus ATCC
29213, 0.03 to 0.25 µg/ml;
S. aureus ATCC 25923, 20 to
25 mm;
Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, 0.03 to 0.25 µg/ml
and 20 to 27 mm;
Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853, 9 to 13
mm,
Enterococcus faecalis ATCC 29212, 0.03 to 0.12 µg/ml;
S. pneumoniae ATCC 49619, 0.015 to 0.12 µg/ml and 23 to
29 mm;
Haemophilus influenzae ATCC 49247, 0.06 to 0.5 µg/ml
and 23 to 31 mm; and
Neisseria gonorrhoeae ATCC 49226, 30 to
40 mm.

INTRODUCTION
Tigecycline (formerly GAR-936) is a new glycylcycline (
24) compound
with a broad spectrum of antibacterial activity (
2-
4,
8,
10,
13,
14,
23). In addition, it has been shown to be active against
microorganisms known to be resistant to other classes of antimicrobial
agents (
1,
11,
12,
19,
20,
22). Recent studies have found that
the age of the broth medium used for in vitro susceptibility
testing can affect the MICs of tigecycline by as much as two
to eightfold (
5,
21). Susceptibility tests performed with medium
which was

12 h old at the time of testing produced MICs which
were substantially lower than those observed with medium that
had been aged for various periods of time up to 1 month. The
effects of medium aging could be counteracted by the addition
of Oxyrase, a biocatalytic oxygen-reducing reagent, to the susceptibility
testing medium. Further testing revealed that dissolving tigecycline
in aged medium resulted in the formation of an oxidized tigecycline
product which had decreased antibacterial activity (
5). Once
the MIC trays were frozen, the oxidation of the drug was minimal.
MIC trays which were prepared using freshly prepared medium
and stored at 20°C for several weeks produced results
which were nearly identical to those obtained with trays tested
on the same day as production with freshly prepared broth medium.
These observations have resulted in the Clinical and Laboratory
Standards Institute (CLSI) requirement that only freshly prepared
medium (

12 h old) be used for testing tigecycline by broth MIC
methods (
7).
Unfortunately, spectrum-of-activity studies published prior to this may be flawed in the respect that they were performed using agar dilution or using broth medium in which the age of the medium was either unknown or unstated.
Tigecycline is currently approved worldwide for the treatment of serious skin, skin structure, and intra-abdominal bacterial infections in hospitals. Bacterial isolates obtained during the clinical trials were tested and reported using freshly prepared medium which was less than 12 h old at the time of MIC tray production (6).
The present study was designed to compare the in vitro antibacterial activity of tigecycline with that of tetracycline against a broad range of bacterial pathogens, provide supplemental data for the sponsor's FDA new-drug application, determine correlation of tigecycline disk diffusion to MIC results for these microorganisms, and propose MIC and disk diffusion quality control ranges for eight different aerobic quality control strains.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Bacteria tested.
A total of 2,490 recent clinical bacterial isolates were selected
as representative pathogens that cause infections for which
tigecycline might be considered for therapy. All isolates were
obtained from medical centers across North America and sent
to the Clinical Microbiology Institute, where they were reidentified
and placed in a large culture collection. These included 269
streptococci, 216 enterococci, 44
Staphylococcus aureus isolates,
86 coagulase-negative staphylococci, 1,352
Enterobacteriaceae,
153 nonfermentative gram-negative rods, 100
Listeria monocytogenes isolates, 64
Moraxella catarrhalis isolates, 93
Neisseria meningitidis isolates, and 113
Haemophilus spp. Two of the goals of this
study were to test approximately 100 strains of species identified
as a potential target for tigecycline therapy and to provide
the sponsor with supplemental data for
Staphylococcus spp. This
collection includes isolates with a variety of previously established
resistance phenotypes.
Antimicrobial susceptibility testing.
Tigecycline was provided as a sterile powder (lot no. MB1611) by Wyeth Research (Pearl River, NY). Tetracycline (lot no. 092K1607) was purchased from Sigma (St. Louis, MO) and was used as an internal quality control. The results for tigecycline were compared to those for tetracycline as a method of establishing relative potency. Disk diffusion susceptibility tests used commercially prepared 15-µg disks of tigecycline (lot no. 3259023) and 30-µg disks of tetracycline (lot no. 0175726) purchased from BD Microbiologic Systems (Cockeysville, MD).
All aerobic organisms were tested by the broth microdilution method recommended by the CLSI (15) using cation-adjusted Mueller-Hinton broth which was less than 12 h old at the time of MIC tray production. The medium was supplemented with 3% lysed horse blood for testing of all streptococci, L. monocytogenes, and N. meningitidis or made up as Haemophilus test medium for testing of Haemophilus spp. as recommended by the CLSI. All organisms were tested simultaneously by the disk diffusion method outlined by the CLSI (16) using Mueller-Hinton agar plus 5% sheep blood (streptococci, L. monocytogenes, M. catarrhalis, and N. meningitidis), Haemophilus test medium agar (Haemophilus spp.), or plain Muller-Hinton agar (all other genera).
MIC-versus-zone-diameter scattergrams (Fig. 1A to F) were prepared using an error minimization approach (17). FDA disk diffusion interpretive criteria are confirmed or proposed for all strains.
Quality control studies.
Three separate multilaboratory studies were undertaken in order
to propose quality control ranges for MIC and disk diffusion
methodologies. The testing laboratories included both hospital
and commercial microbiology laboratories in the United States
and are identified in Table
1. These studies closely followed
the protocol described by the CLSI (
17) with the exception that
the number of testing facilities exceeded the minimum number
of seven required sites. In addition, a total of up to six lots
of broth medium was tested rather than the minimum of three
lots. The quality control organisms were those recommended by
the CLSI (
18) and included
S. aureus ATCC 29213 (MIC only) and
ATCC 25923 (disk only),
Enterococcus faecalis ATCC 29212 (MIC
only),
Streptococcus pneumoniae ATCC 49619 (MIC and disk),
Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853 (disk only),
Escherichia coli ATCC 25922
(MIC and disk),
Neisseria gonorrhoeae ATCC 49226 (disk only),
and
Haemophilus influenzae ATCC 49247 (MIC and disk). Internal
quality control results for the control drug, tetracycline,
were within published ranges available (
18) for the majority
of tests. When any control value was out of the established
ranges, all of the tigecycline data associated with that day's
testing were discarded. This study involved 10 replicate tests
on up to six lots of Mueller-Hinton broth or three lots of agar,
two lots of 15-µg tigecycline disks (BDMS lot no. 0167721
and Oxoid lot no. 241765), and one lot of 30-µg tetracycline
disks (BDMS lot no. 1050730). This exercise generated a target
of 600 MICs and 480 disk diffusion zone diameters with each
appropriate quality control strain. Zone diameters were evaluated
using the statistics of Gavan et al. (
9).

RESULTS
Spectrum-of-activity and interpretive-criteria study.
Table
3 summarizes the MICs of tigecycline and tetracycline
against all bacterial isolates tested. Tigecycline exhibited
excellent activity against all gram-positive species,
M. catarrhalis,
H. influenzae, and
N. meningitidis, with MICs at which 90% of
bacteria were inhibited (MIC
90s) of

0.5 µg/ml. For the
majority of these species, tigecycline was 2 to 1,024 times
more potent than tetracycline. MICs were not significantly affected
by increasing resistance to penicillin (
S. pneumoniae), oxacillin
(staphylococci), vancomycin (enterococci), or the presence of
extended-spectrum ß-lactamases (ESBLs) (
E. coli and
Klebsiella pneumoniae). In each of these instances, the MIC
90 of the resistant strains was within 1 doubling dilution of that
of the more susceptible isolates. Good activity was also noted
for
Haemophilus parainfluenzae and the majority of the
Enterobacteriaceae species. The MIC
90s for these species ranged from 0.25 µg/ml
(
Citrobacter koseri) to 2 µg/ml (
Klebsiella oxytoca, ESBL
+ K. pneumoniae,
Proteus vulgaris,
Serratia marcescens, and
Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium). Good activity was also noted
for
Pasteurella multocida (MIC
90 = 0.25 µg/ml). Decreased
in vitro activity was noted for
Morganella spp.,
Proteus spp.
other than
P. vulgaris,
Providencia spp.,
Burkholderia cepacia,
P. aeruginosa, and
Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, which had MIC
90s of

4 µg/ml for tigecycline. A total of 122/125 (97.6%)
of the isolates with an individual MIC of

4 µg/ml were
from among this group of microorganisms.
Figure
1A to F shows the scattergrams of tigecycline MICs versus
disk diffusion zone diameters. FDA susceptible-only MIC breakpoints
and disk diffusion breakpoints for tigecycline of

0.25 µg/ml
and

19 mm for the nonpneumococcal streptococci and enterococci
and

0.5 µg/ml and

19 mm for the staphylococci and MIC
breakpoints of

2, 4, and 8 µg/ml and

19 mm, 15 to 18 mm,
and

14 mm for susceptible, intermediate, and resistant for the
Enterobacteriaceae were confirmed (Table
2). Provisional susceptible-only
breakpoints of

1 µg/ml and

19 mm for
Haemophilus spp.
and

0.25 µg/ml and

19 mm for
S. pneumoniae are proposed
based on the data from this study. The zone diameter breakpoints
proposed were designed to minimize the interpretive discrepancies
between the two types of susceptibility testing methods.
The error rates for the majority of species were within the
limits established by the CLSI (
17). The profound activity of
tigecycline against all gram-positive isolates is readily apparent.
The error rates for
S. pneumoniae and
Streptococcus spp. other
than S.
pneumoniae (Fig.
1B), the enterococci (Fig.
1C), and
Haemophilus spp. (Fig.
1F) were all zero. The staphylococcal
isolates (44
S. aureus isolates and 86 coagulase negative staphylococci)
showed 5 strains above the
S. aureus FDA sensitive-only breakpoint,
including one strain of
S. haemolyticus which was 2 dilutions
above and the 4 strains (3 coagulase-negative staphylococci
and a single strain of
S. aureus known to be methicillin resistant
and vancomycin intermediate) which were 1 dilution above the
breakpoint (Fig.
1A). This strain of
S. aureus was retested
recently and had a tigecycline MIC of 0.5 µg/ml on retest.
The very major and minor error rates for the Enterobacteriaceae (Fig. 1D) were high. The vast majority of these errors were due to Morganella morganii, Proteus spp. other than P. vulgaris, and Providencia spp. If these strains were eliminated from consideration, the very-major-error rate would drop to 0 while minor error rates would drop to 3 out of 1,054 isolates or 0.3% (Fig. 1E). Included among these strains are isolates known to produce ESBLs.
Quality control studies.
Quality control ranges for MIC testing were proposed on the basis of the modal MICs observed ± 1 log2 dilution. If the MIC distribution was bimodal, then a four-dilution range was proposed. Disk diffusion zone diameter ranges were proposed using the method of Gavan et al. (9) with adjustments as needed in order to encompass at least 95% of observed values. The proposed MIC and zone diameter ranges are presented in Tables 4 and 5, respectively. These quality control ranges were accepted by the Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Subcommittee of the CLSI at their January 2004 and June 2004 meetings and later by the FDA.

DISCUSSION
The in vitro activity of tigecycline against gram-positive strains,
M. catarrhalis,
N. meningitidis, and
H. influenzae, was excellent.
Tigecycline was consistently more potent than tetracycline against
all species under study. MICs were not significantly affected
by increasing resistance to penicillin (
S. pneumoniae), oxacillin
(staphylococci), or vancomycin (enterococci) or the presence
of ESBLs (
E. coli and
K. pneumoniae). Tentative disk diffusion
breakpoints based upon provisional MIC breakpoints can be proposed
for
S. pneumoniae and
Haemophilus spp., and FDA-approved breakpoints
are confirmed for the other species. The following MIC and/or
disk diffusion quality control ranges were established:
S. aureus ATCC 29213, 0.03 to 0.25 µg/ml;
S. aureus ATCC 25923,
20 to 25 mm;
E. coli ATCC 25922, 0.03 to 0.25 µg/ml and
20 to 27 mm,
E. faecalis ATCC 29212, 0.03 to 0.12 µg/ml;
P. aeruginosa ATCC 27853, 9 to 13 mm;
S. pneumoniae ATCC 49619,
0.015 to 0.12 µg/ml and 23 to 29 mm;
H. influenzae ATCC
49247, 0.06 to 0.5 µg/ml and 23 to 31 mm; and
N. gonorrhoeae ATCC 49226, 30 to 40 mm. These quality control ranges for both
MIC and disk diffusion methodologies have been accepted and
published by the CLSI and are in the package insert for tigecycline.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Financial support for this project was provided by Wyeth Research,
Pearl River, NY.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: The Clinical Microbiology Institute, 9725 SW Commerce Circle, Wilsonville, OR 97070. Phone: (503) 682-3232. Fax: (503) 682-2065. E-mail:
sbrown{at}clinmicroinst.com 
Published ahead of print on 9 May 2007. 

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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, July 2007, p. 2173-2179, Vol. 45, No. 7
0095-1137/07/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JCM.02351-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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