Does variable exotoxin expression alter outcome in Panton Valentine Leukocidin associated S. aureus infections?

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In the UK, Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections are associated with enormous personal and financial costs to the individual, their family and to the NHS (estimated at around #1 billion p.a.). Recently new Community-Acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) strains have emerged which cause severe infections in healthy young people. CA-MRSA have a larger armament of toxins which disable human host defences and damage human tissues, including a toxin called Panton-Valentine Leukocidin (PVL).Against this backdrop, the development of new classes of antibiotics has lagged far behind the urgent requirement for new drugs, in part because of the reluctance of major pharmaceutical companies to develop expensive new drugs that become rapidly obsolete through resistance. Consequently we need to gain better insights into the infection-specific lifestyle of bacteria if we are to discover new ways of preventing and treating infections.S. aureus bacteria use chemical signals to make decisions as a group about when to produce toxins. We are seeking to understand what factors influence toxin production during an infection. Ultimately our aim is to develop drugs that will disable the production of toxins by interfering with this chemical signalling system. Such drugs are also less likely to promote drug resistance.