Edinburgh Napier University

  Background: Intracellular bacteria have evolved elegant mechanisms to invade, manipulate, and survive in their hosts. Investigation of bacterial pathogenic mechanisms has helped us to understand, in many cases, how intracellular bacteria overcome host immune responses but future developments include exploiting such bacteria for medical therapies. There is growing interest in the concept of ‘anti-virulence’ as an alternative therapeutic approach, particularly in the light of increasing antibiotic resistance. Furthermore, a number of approaches exploiting pathogenic mechanisms to deliver therapeutic molecules directly into the host have shown promise as anti-tumour therapies.

Objectives: Recent progress in exploiting bacteria such as Salmonella enterica and Listeria monocytogenes will be discussed, including some of the challenges and complexities that are known, as well as those which are as yet unknown.