The Bacterial Swiss Army Knife: ExPEC Utilizes Multiple Resistance Mechanisms to Counteract Host Immune Responses
Eveline Weerdenburg, Susan King, Joyce Lübbers, Elise Hovingh, Todd Davies, Jeroen Geurtsen, Germie van den Dobbelsteen, Jan Poolman · 2025
Read The Bacterial Swiss Army Knife: ExPEC Utilizes Multiple Resistance Mechanisms to Counteract Host Immune Responses by Eveline Weerdenburg, Susan King, Joyce Lübbers, Elise Hovingh, Todd Davies, Jeroen Geurtsen, Germie van den Dobbelsteen, Jan Poolman (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12846712.txt.
Description
Eveline Weerdenburg and co-authors review in this 2025 paper the many shields a gut bacterium raises once it invades the rest of the body. Extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli, shortened to ExPEC, causes urinary and blood infections, and it routinely survives complement, antimicrobial peptides, antibodies, and killer cells.
The review tours the bacterium's kit: sugary coats, surface proteins, toxins, and enzymes that blunt each host weapon in turn. Working together, these factors let the germ thrive in blood and organs. The authors frame the catalog as a target list for vaccines and drugs against a pathogen that shrugs off the immune system's standard playbook. Each shield named is a drug lead. Blood infections show the kit at full stretch.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Eveline Weerdenburg, Susan King, Joyce Lübbers, Elise Hovingh, Todd Davies, Jeroen Geurtsen, Germie van den Dobbelsteen, Jan Poolman |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 60 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |