Transcriptional Analysis of the Effects of Gambogic Acid and Neogambogic Acid on Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus

• Published in: Frontiers in pharmacology Vol. 10; p. 986
• Main Authors: Hua, Xin, Jia, Yue, Yang, Qin, Zhang, Wanjiang, Dong, Zhimin, Liu, Siguo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 13.09.2019
• Subjects: gambogic acid; MRSA; neogambogic acid; Pharmacology; saeRS two-component system; staphylococcus aureus biofilms; gambogic acid; staphylococcus aureus biofilms; neogambogic acid; MRSA; saeRS two-component system
• ISSN: 1663-9812; 1663-9812
• DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2019.00986

Methicillin-resistant (MRSA) infection is a major threat to human health, as this bacterium has developed resistance to a variety of conventional antibiotics. This is especially true of MRSA biofilms, which not only exhibit enhanced pathogenicity but also are resistant to most antibiotics. In this work, we demonstrated that two natural products with antitumor activity, namely, gambogic acid (GA) and neogambogic acid (NGA), have significant inhibitory activity toward MRSA. GA and NGA can not only effectively inhibit planktonic MRSA strains and , but also have strong inhibitory effects on MRSA biofilms formation. By transcriptome sequencing, Q-RT-PCR and PRM, we found that GA and NGA could reduce the expression of virulence factors by inhibiting the two-component, thus achieving inhibition of MRSA. We found that GA and NGA had anti-MRSA activity and and identified to be the target, indicating that inhibitors may be used to treat biofilm-related infections.