Dear Colleagues,

The increasing resistance to traditional antibiotics is becoming a health problem. The issue is critical for the ESKAPE pathogens Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter spp. under hospital settings where the proximity of patients facilitates the transfer of antibiotic resistance mainly through plasmids. The situation is caused by the overuse of antimicrobial treatments in humans and farming and has presented the healthcare system with a potential crisis with broad implications. The rapidly increasing antibiotic resistance problem is exacerbated by long drug approval times and low profitability of antibiotics production, forcing researchers and governments to address alternatives to antibiotics. The solutions are multiple and based, among others, on natural plant-derived products or fully synthetic approaches, including metal complexes and other constructs capable of bypassing drug efflux systems and resisting metabolic modifications by pathogens. Our hope is that looking for alternatives to the commercial systems may present us with a broader view of the antibiotics resistance problem and allow for designing strategies capable of delaying the presentation of resistance and finding ways to avoid its generation in the future.

The scope of articles accepted for the Special Issue:

1. Study of antibacterial compounds based on phytochemicals, their mechanism of action, and metabolic pathways within the pathogen;
2. Study of novel targets for phytochemicals within the bacterial community and mechanism of their specificities;
3. Study of metal complexes as novel antibacterials and their mechanism of action on the pathogens;
4. Study of novel targets for metal complexes for antibacterials and their selectivity within the bacterial community;
5. Investigation of systemic effects of antibacterials based on phytochemicals and metal complexes on bacterial infections in animals;

Articles that will not be selected:

1. Commercial antibiotics, unless used as a comparison with the alternative approaches;
2. Bacteriophage-based therapies and their applications;
3. Metal nanoparticles and their different forms as antibacterial agents.

Dr. Wiesław ́Sw̧Ietnicki
Guest Editor

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• antibacterial compounds
• phytochemicals
• metal complexes
• antibiotics
• resistance