Can virulence factors be viable antibacterial targets?

There is a real crisis in healthcare with the emergence of bacterial pathogens resistant to multiple drugs. The drug discovery industry is faced with the challenge of developing new classes of antibiotics that are effective against resistant organisms. Targeting bacterial virulence is one approach that has yet to be fully exploited, and the last decade or so has seen the development of reagents, screens and approaches that could make this possible. Several processes utilized by bacteria to cause infection are employed in a wide range of pathogens and as such may make attractive targets. Inhibitors of such targets would be unlikely to affect host cells, be cross-resistant to existing therapies and induce resistance themselves.