From the early 1950s onwards, a large number of antibiotics, due to the emergence of multidrug-resistant common pathogen strains (both gram-negative and gram-positive), became scarcely effective and not-useful.
[4] Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) is the major aetiological agent of Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) and is often studied as a model of Gram-negative pathogen for the development of pilicides compounds.
One possible target is the WTA biosynthetic pathway because strains of S.aureus and Bacillus subtilis mutants in WTAs are not able to colonize the host tissue and show a greatly diminished ability to establish infection in animal models.
[7] Early examples of the antivirulence approach include mainly the inactivation of bacterial toxins with anti-toxin antibodies administered to post-exposure patients (serological therapy that induces artificially acquired passive immunization).
Since inactivation of toxin during infection has proven to be an effective way to prevent or alleviate the symptoms of acute disease, significant progress has been made in the development of novel anti-toxic monoclonal antibodies.