About this Research Topic

Background

It has become evident that mainstream antimicrobial treatments unremittingly fail the control of microbial infections due to the pathogens’ tactics to overcome most drugs. Consequently, multidrug resistant (MDR) pathogens elevation is unswerving. This rise adversely impacts human health globally and imperatively impedes the progress in the pipeline of drug development. The drugs with unique mechanism(s) of action or alternative to the currently used drugs (antibiotics/synthetic drugs) are appealing and a resolute solution for the management of MDR pathogens. In particular, plants appear promising in compounds with potential to lessen and or eliminate MDR pathogens through bursting their pathogenicity and virulence mechanisms.

With the clinical pipeline of antibacterial drugs running dry; additional novel drugs and strategies with unique target sites on the pathogens are of paramount need. Pathoblockers or antivirulence agents present unique mechanism of action and have potential to efficiently reduce the virulence in bacterial pathogens, thereby mitigate bacterial infections.

The goal of this issue is to document potential agents from plants, capable of modulating the pathogenicity and virulence in MDR pathogens, and any other unique drug target site(s) on the pathogen, in anticipation to contribute to the rescue of the current AMR treatment failures, and adding to the drug development. We believe the topics here will showcase new antibacterial and strategies potentially challenging the current AMR and emerging MDR strains, while concurrently contributing potential compounds as imminent leads for drug development.

This research topic invites manuscript(s) of interest must at least address (in vitro, in situ, in silico, in vivo technique or many other) the following:
• Plant extracts and compounds that possess a modulatory effect on MDR bacterial pathogenic or virulence factors.
• Plant extracts and secondary metabolites effect on MDR bacterial biofilms, quorum sensing inhibition, interfering with bacterial toxin
• Effect of plant secondary metabolites on associated virulence genes
• Novel plausible methods for the screening, detection, selection and or characterization of pathoblockers and antivirulence agents
• Mechanisms of bacterial pathogenicity and virulence that contribute to the organism’s ability to resist multidrug and potential strategies to block them
• Synergistic effect between plant extract and traditional antibiotics to overcome resistance

Keywords: Antibiofilms, Antipathogenicity, Antivirulence, Multidrug resistant pathogens, Plants, Secondary metabolites

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