, 2002; Lamari et al., 2004), or an extracellular ‘lipid S’ of S. epidermidis (Elliott et al., 2000). In most cases, the chemical structure of the antigens has not been determined. To date, none of these antigens have

led to the development Protease Inhibitor Library cell assay of a commercialized diagnostic test. We have chosen to test, as an antigen for a serodiagnostic, the PNAG, a characteristic and well-characterized component of staphylococcal biofilms (Sadovskaya et al., 2007). As a first step of our study, we investigated cases of chronic infections caused by the strains known as PNAG producers. This problem could be addressed thanks to a TC-GP animal model, mimicking an implant-related infection (Chokr et al., 2007), and a collection of staphylococcal strains with a well-characterized biofilm composition (Sadovskaya et al., 2005, 2006). We developed a sensible ELISA essay, which included coating the Microlon 600 plates with the preparations of purified PNAG, incubation with the animal or human sera, and detection of the bound anti-PNAG antibodies with the appropriate HRP- or AP-conjugated secondary antibodies (Sadovskaya et al., 2007). We have shown that in the chosen animal model, the levels of anti-PNAG antibodies were significantly

higher in guinea-pigs infected with S. epidermidis RP62A compared with healthy animals selleck kinase inhibitor (P>0.01). When the evolution of an antibody response to PNAG in individual guinea-pigs was studied, we observed an increase of the level of antibodies following the implant-related

infection. The results were more ambiguous with human sera. Screening of patients’ sera and the sera of healthy individuals reveals a relatively high level of anti-PNAG immunoglobulin Gs (IgGs) in the sera of healthy controls. The level of these IgGs in patients’ sera was very variable and overall higher, but the difference was insignificant (P>0.05). If this result is rather disappointing, it is nevertheless interesting to try to understand the reason for this phenomenon. Despite the fact that the presence of the ica operon is considered as a marker discriminating between clinical device-associated strains and skin flora (Galdbart et al., 2000; Kozitskaya et al., 2005), Erlotinib cost a significant percentage of commensal CoNS strains in healthy individuals is ica-positive and potentially capable of producing PNAG. The presence of anti-PNAG IgGs in the sera of healthy individuals could thus be explained by their natural exposure to PNAG-producing CoNS and Gram-negative bacteria, the possible presence of these antigens in common vaccine preparations, as well as previous infections and nasal carriage of S. aureus. Biofilm is considered as a main virulence factor of CoNS, a major cause of medical implant-associated infections. Targeting the bacterial biofilm state and particularly the EPS matrix might be a key for the development of therapeutic tools against these infections. We have particularly focused on the biofilm of S.