Natural Quorum Sensing Inhibitors: Potent Weapon to Control Bacterial Infections

The emergence of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens is one of the most serious public health threats that result mostly from the inappropriate and indiscriminate use of conventional antibiotics for the treatment of infectious diseases. These antibiotics mainly affect bacterial viability, resulting in the emergence of resistant pathogens under this selective pressure. Thus, in turn, necessary to explore the search for novel antimicrobial agents with a novel mechanism of action. The newer class of antimicrobial agents, which target bacterial pathogenesis and virulence instead of affecting bacterial viability, represents an alternate and interesting approach to treating bacterial infections. Quorum sensing (QS) target is one of the main targets among the various antivirulence and anti-pathogenesis approaches since it plays a significant role in the expression of virulence and pathogenesis factors during the infection process. The metabolites or compounds from plants and microorganisms have been reported to inhibit quorum sensing. Due to the extensive diversity and complexity of natural products as compared to conventional antibiotics, they show a wide range of mechanisms of action. The use of natural QS inhibitors or quorum quenchers provides a potential strategy and has been adopted as a model for the discovery of new antimicrobial agents as quorum sensing inhibitors. In this chapter, the advancement in searching for promising novel targets for the development of natural next-generation antimicrobials to conquer infections caused by bacterial pathogens has been discussed in detail.

Keywords: Antivirulence, Antimicrobial agents, Antibiotic resistance, Quorum Sensing, Quorum Sensing Inhibitors, Quorum Quenchers.