Community Series in Fighting an Elusive Enemy: Staphylococcus aureus and its Antibiotic Resistance, Immune-Evasion and Toxic Mechanisms: Volume 2''

This Research Topic is the second volume of the “Fighting an Elusive Enemy: Staphylococcus aureus and its Antibiotic Resistance, Immune-Evasion and Toxic Mechanisms” Community Series. Please see Volume I here

The magnitude of the global Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) problem is now well recognized with approximately 700,000 deaths occurring each year due to antibiotic-resistant infections. Estimates suggest that this could increase to 10 million lives lost each year by 2050. The AMR emergency is associated with an increase in global antibiotic use, poor antimicrobial stewardship, and the widespread and uncontrolled use of antibiotics in animals for food production. Despite the importance of new antimicrobial drugs, vaccines are increasingly recognized as essential and highly effective tools to mitigate the effects of increasing AMR. Vaccines can have a direct effect, by lowering the burden of infection but also act indirectly, by reducing both the selective pressure caused by unnecessary antimicrobial exposure and the risk from secondary bacterial infections following an initial viral episode. According to WHO, CDC and other governmental and non-governmental bodies, the past years have seen a dramatic increase of the number of microorganisms that are becoming resistant to antibiotics. For the majority of these bacteria (S. aureus, N. gonorrhoeae, E. coli, P. aeruginosa, C. difficile, Enterobacteria, Enterococci , etc.) no vaccines are currently available and the development efforts are largely in an early stage.

Among the antibiotic-resistant bacteria, infections by S. aureus represent a high burden for the health system and the community. S. aureus infection affects the host innate immunity activity, reducing the efficiency of processes like phagocytosis, but has also an impact on acquired immunity, impairing the effector function of B and T cells. All this translates into an intrinsic difficulty in developing effective vaccines.

This Research Topic will critically review the current knowledge about the interactions between S. aureus and the host immune system, at the level of both innate and acquired immunity, and will inform how this knowledge can help to design effective prophylactic and, possibly, therapeutic vaccines. The Research Topic would consist of Review and Original Research articles with critical appraisal of:

- Search for effective vaccines against S. aureus and lessons learned from previous failures

- Development of vaccines against other AMR bacteria (e.g. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Clostridioides difficile, etc)

- Escape mechanisms used by S. aureus to evade the effector functions of the innate immune system (e.g. PMN and others)

- Down-regulation of the immune response triggered by some S. aureus antigens (e.g. protein A and others)

- Acquired immunity, antigen specificity, and effector function following S. aureus infection

- Status of antimicrobial resistance of S. aureus at the community level

Topic Editors Dr. Bagnoli and Dr. Phogat are employed by GlaxoSmithKline plc. The other Topic Editors Declare no conflict of interest in relation to the Research Topic theme

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