Discovery and Biological Characterization of the Auromomycin Chromophore as an Inhibitor of Biofilm Formation inVibrio cholerae

Bacterial biofilms pose a significant challenge in clinical environments due to their inherent lack of susceptibility to antibiotic treatment. It is widely recognized that most pathogenic bacterial strains in the clinical setting persist in the biofilm state, and are the root cause of many recrudescent infections. Discovery and development of compounds capable of either inhibiting biofilm formation or initiating biofilm dispersal may provide new therapeutic avenues for reducing the number of hospital acquired, biofilm-mediated infections. We now report the application of our recently reported image-based, high-throughput screen to the discovery of microbially-derived natural products with biofilm inhibitory activity against Vibrio cholerae. Examination of a prefractionated library of microbially-derived marine natural products has lead to the identification of a new biofilm inhibitor that is structurally unrelated to previously reported inhibitors and is one of the most potent inhibitors reported to date against V. cholerae. Combination of this compound with sub-MIC concentrations of a number of clinically relevant antibiotics was shown to improve the biofilm inhibitory efficacy of this new compound compared to monotherapy treatments, and provides evidence for the potential therapeutic benefit of biofilm inhibitors in treating persistent biofilm-mediated infections.