Strategies against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus persisters

Wooseong Kim, Gabriel L. Hendricks, Katerina Tori, Beth B. Fuchs, Eleftherios Mylonakis

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

30 Scopus citations

Abstract

Chronic Staphylococcus aureus infections are complicated by frequent relapses not only from the development of drug resistance to conventional antibiotics, but also through the formation of persister bacterial cells. Bacterial persisters are in a transient, metabolically inactive state, making conventional antibiotics that target essential cellular growth processes ineffective, resulting in high clinical failure rates of antibiotic chemotherapy. The development of new antibiotics against persistent S. aureus is an urgent issue. Over the last decade, new strategies to identify S. aureus persister-active compounds have been proposed. This review summarizes the proposed targets, antipersister compounds and innovative methods that may augment conventional antibiotics against S. aureus persisters. The reviewed antipersister strategies can be summarized as two broad categories; directly targeting growth-independent targets and potentiating existing, ineffective antibiotics by aiding uptake or accessibility.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)779-794
Number of pages16
JournalFuture Medicinal Chemistry
Volume10
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2018

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Newlands Press.

Keywords

  • MRSA
  • antibiotics
  • drug discover
  • persisters

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Strategies against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus persisters'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this