ClpPing persistence

Northeastern University researchers have combined traditional antibiotics with compounds that activate bacterial clpP protease and cured mice with severe, highly drug-resistant Staphylococcus biofilm infections.¹ Arietis Corp. is developing analogs of the compounds to treat persistent bacterial infections.

Bacterial persistence occurs when a subpopulation of bacteria slows its growth rate and becomes insensitive to growth-inhibiting antibiotics. One place where this commonly occurs is in biofilms, which are surface-attached bacterial communities held together by extracellular polymeric matrices...