About this Research Topic
Infectious diseases still remain one of the biggest threats of humankind, despite significant and continuous progress in prevention, diagnostic, and therapy. With the discovery of antimicrobial and antiviral agents and prevention by vaccination, life expectancy increased significantly; unfortunately, due to the anti-vaccination attitude and to the emergence and spread of resistance mechanisms, there is an imperative need to develop novel preventive and therapeutic strategies.
Bacteria have evolved means that allow to sense external cues, allowing them to adapt to different environments, including the host. Nevertheless, this bacterial ability to sense signals is only starting to be understood in a broad sense. Bacteria to bacteria communication is not unidirectional and different genera of bacteria and even bacteria-fungi, can also exchange signals that modulate their phenotype. Things become even more complex when viral and microbial infections are superposing in the same host.
A better understanding of pathogens’ ability to sense, respond and manipulate host immune responses in order to infect, persist and transmit to a new host will provide new promising leads for vaccines and therapeutics that most likely would allow to control a broad range of diseases. The goal of this special issue is to present the current progress and perspectives regarding pathogen-host crosstalk, in the hope to provide a fruitful platform for feeding the pipeline for the future development of vaccines and anti-infective therapies.
This Research Topic welcomes contributions in the form of Original Research, Review, and Mini-Review that focus on, but are not limited to, the following issues:
• Bacterial signaling mechanisms for host cells immunomodulation during infection, particularly bacterial two component systems, bacterial sigma factors, secretion systems, quorum sensing, and biofilm signaling.
• Bacterial mechanisms for modulation of host immune responses.
• New approaches for enhancing host immunity against infections based on pathogen-host crosstalk (e.g., preventing gut inflammation, utilizing microbial competitors such as probiotics, inducing nutritional shifts to restrict infectious diseases, understanding how antimicrobial resistance influences the anti-infectious host immune response for developing interventions to reduce colonisation and transmission of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria etc.)
• Manipulation of pathogen-host crosstalk methods in drug discovery and respiratory disease treatment (e.g. exploring the ability of different intracellular and extracellular pathogens to modulate cell death dynamics as a mean to develop novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment of respiratory infections).
Bacteria have evolved means that allow to sense external cues, allowing them to adapt to different environments, including the host. Nevertheless, this bacterial ability to sense signals is only starting to be understood in a broad sense. Bacteria to bacteria communication is not unidirectional and different genera of bacteria and even bacteria-fungi, can also exchange signals that modulate their phenotype. Things become even more complex when viral and microbial infections are superposing in the same host.
A better understanding of pathogens’ ability to sense, respond and manipulate host immune responses in order to infect, persist and transmit to a new host will provide new promising leads for vaccines and therapeutics that most likely would allow to control a broad range of diseases. The goal of this special issue is to present the current progress and perspectives regarding pathogen-host crosstalk, in the hope to provide a fruitful platform for feeding the pipeline for the future development of vaccines and anti-infective therapies.
This Research Topic welcomes contributions in the form of Original Research, Review, and Mini-Review that focus on, but are not limited to, the following issues:
• Bacterial signaling mechanisms for host cells immunomodulation during infection, particularly bacterial two component systems, bacterial sigma factors, secretion systems, quorum sensing, and biofilm signaling.
• Bacterial mechanisms for modulation of host immune responses.
• New approaches for enhancing host immunity against infections based on pathogen-host crosstalk (e.g., preventing gut inflammation, utilizing microbial competitors such as probiotics, inducing nutritional shifts to restrict infectious diseases, understanding how antimicrobial resistance influences the anti-infectious host immune response for developing interventions to reduce colonisation and transmission of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria etc.)
• Manipulation of pathogen-host crosstalk methods in drug discovery and respiratory disease treatment (e.g. exploring the ability of different intracellular and extracellular pathogens to modulate cell death dynamics as a mean to develop novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment of respiratory infections).
Keywords: Bacterial signaling, Host immunity, Immunomodulation, Host-pathogen communication
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
