Editorial : pathoblockers and antivirulence agents of plant-origin for the management of multidrug resistant pathogens

Abstract

Given the huge diversity of flora and ecosystems in the world, plants likely represent significant sources of bioactive compounds and, consequently, they have been extensively explored for new drug discoveries. Among their bioactivities, plant metabolites, which are the most powerful and promising elements of plants, have been shown to possess antimicrobial potential. It is well known that plant extracts act as antibacterial and antifungal agents (Anand et al., 2019; Mandrone et al., 2019; Adeosun et al., 2022), but they are also a valuable source of anti-virulence compounds with unique mechanism of action targeting pathogenicity or virulence. In addition, some phytochemicals, despite not being directly microbial inhibitors by themselves, show antibiotic adjuvant activity or bio-enhancing activity to attain bactericidal synergism (Patil et al., 2011; Dudhatra et al., 2012); moreover, they serve as reducing and stabilizing agents for the effective synthesis of plant-based metal nanoparticles, improving the antibacterial properties of these nanomaterials (Guleria et al., 2022).