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Updated: Jul 6, 2026

Determination of Tolerable Fatty Acids and Cholera Toxin Concentrations Using Human Intestinal Epithelial Cells and BALB/c Mouse Macrophages
Published on: May 30, 2013
Small-molecule inhibitor of Vibrio cholerae virulence and intestinal colonization
Deborah T Hung1, Elizabeth A Shakhnovich, Emily Pierson
1Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA. dhung@partners.org
Abstract:
Increasing antibiotic resistance requires the development of new approaches to combating infection. Virulence gene expression in vivo represents a target for antibiotic discovery that has not yet been explored. A high-throughput, phenotypic screen was used to identify a small molecule 4-[N-(1,8-naphthalimide)]-n-butyric acid, virstatin, that inhibits virulence regulation in Vibrio cholerae. By inhibiting the transcriptional regulator ToxT, virstatin prevents expression of two critical V. cholerae virulence factors, cholera toxin and the toxin coregulated pilus. Orogastric administration of virstatin protects infant mice from intestinal colonization by V. cholerae.
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