Alternative treatment strategies against bacterial infections are required to decrease the use of antibiotics. This study tested the hypothesis that stimulation of the innate immune receptor Toll-like receptor 4 can be combined with antibiotics to improve the treatment of invasive pneumonia. The efficacy of the biosynthetic monophosphoryl lipid A (MPLA), a clinically approved Toll-like receptor 4 activator, was tested in a mouse model of respiratory infection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe treatment of respiratory tract infections is threatened by the emergence of bacterial resistance. Immunomodulatory drugs, which enhance airway innate immune defenses, may improve therapeutic outcome. In this concept paper, we aim to highlight the utility of pharmacometrics and Bayesian inference in the development of immunomodulatory therapeutic agents as an adjunct to antibiotics in the context of pneumonia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. The causative agent of this acute respiratory disease is a newly emerged coronavirus, named SARS-CoV-2, which originated in China in late 2019. Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 leads to multifaceted disease outcomes from asymptomatic infection to severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress and potentially death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCombining amoxicillin with the immunostimulatory toll-like receptor 4 agonist monophosphoryl lipid A (MPLA) represents an innovative approach for enhancing antibacterial treatment success. Exploiting pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic data from an infection model of infected mice, we aimed to evaluate the preclinical exposure-response relationship of amoxicillin with MPLA coadministration and establish a link to survival. Antibiotic serum concentrations, bacterial numbers in lung and spleen and survival data of mice being untreated or treated with amoxicillin (four dose levels), MPLA, or their combination were analyzed by nonlinear mixed-effects modelling and time-to-event analysis using NONMEM to characterize these treatment regimens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo assess pharmacokinetics of amoxicillin (AMX) in mice, limitations such as a small sampling volume and low drug concentrations have to be addressed. Similar challenges are faced in a clinical framework, e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBacterial infections of the respiratory tract constitute a major cause of death worldwide. Given the constant rise in bacterial resistance to antibiotics, treatment failure is increasingly frequent. In this context, innovative therapeutic strategies are urgently needed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtensive use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) for pathogen profiling has the potential to transform our understanding of how genomic plasticity contributes to phenotypic versatility. However, the storage of large amounts of NGS data and visualization tools need to evolve to offer the scientific community fast and convenient access to these data. We introduce BACTOME as a database system that links aligned DNA- and RNA-sequencing reads of clinical Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates with clinically relevant pathogen phenotypes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa is capable of establishing severe and persistent infections in various eukaryotic hosts. It encodes a wide array of virulence factors and employs several strategies to evade immune detection. In the present study, we screened the Harvard Medical School transposon mutant library of P.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPseudomonas aeruginosa is distinguished by its broad metabolic diversity and its remarkable capability for adaptation, which relies on a large collection of transcriptional regulators and alternative sigma (σ) factors. The largest group of alternative σ factors is that of the extracytoplasmic function (ECF) σ factors, which control key transduction pathways for maintenance of envelope homeostasis in response to external stress and cell growth. In addition, there are specific roles of alternative σ factors in regulating the expression of virulence and virulence-associated genes.
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