Agents that Inhibit Bacterial Biofilm Formation

Abstract

In the biofilm form, bacteria are more resistant to various antimicrobial treatments. Bacteria in a biofilm can also survive harsh conditions and withstand the host's immune system. Therefore, there is a need for new treatment options to treat biofilm-associated infections. Currently, research is focused on the development of antibiofilm agents that are nontoxic, as it is believed that such molecules will not lead to future drug resistance. In this review, we discuss recent discoveries of antibiofilm agents and different approaches to inhibit/disperse biofilms. These new antibiofilm agents, which contain moieties such as imidazole, phenols, indole, triazole, sulfide, furanone, bromopyrrole, peptides, etc. have the potential to disperse bacterial biofilms in vivo and could positively impact human medicine in the future.

Evaluation of a non-submerged cultivation assay combined to ESEM imaging for analysis of biofilms formed by dairy-associated sporeforming bacteria

“…This process has a crucial meaning with regard to cross contamination and disease transmission. That is why, in recent years, dispersion was considered as an interesting target for biofilm prevention and control strategies, in industrial and clinic settings (Kaplan, 2010;McDougald et al, 2011, Rabin et al, 2015. Interestingly, non-submerged biofilms combined to ESEM appears as an efficient model for analysis of biofilm dispersion and should provide additional data and measurements, since samples examined in ESEM can be used with a range of downstream methods directly after viewing (Bergmans et al, 2005).…”

A peptide from human β thymosin as a platform for the development of new anti-biofilm agents for Staphylococcus spp. and Pseudomonas aeruginosa

“…As reported in BaAMPs, the novel database of AMPs specifically assayed against microbial biofilms, a number of natural, semi-synthetic and synthetic AMPs resulted effective against microbial biofilms especially in preventing their formation, but they are less effective to eradicate mature biofilms (Di Luca et al 2015). Complete structured biofilms are intrinsically resistant even to AMPs due to a combination of factors, in particular the presence of exopolysaccharides (EPSs) and other extracellular biofilm molecules (amyloids, extracellular DNA) that interfere with the AMPs activity (Di Luca et al 2014;Rabin et al 2015).…”

Antibacterial fatty acids destabilize hydrophobic and multicellular aggregates of biofilm in S. aureus

“…So our finding suggests that bacterial dormancy is disadvantageous to bacteria and provides a way to dislodge the biofilm by the help of antibacterial fatty acids. Although, it is well known that fatty acids; for example, cis-2-decenoic acid and oleic acid, are working effectively as biofilm inhibitors, 33 but the mechanism of antibiofilm activity is not defined until now. In the present study, the bacterial defenses (that is, FAMEs) active at planktonic stage and weakness of highly protected biofilm population (that is, increase hydrophobicity) has been elucidated.…”