Table 1.

New strategies to combat bacterial infections.

Strategy	Examples	Advantages	Disadvantages
Develop new antibiotics	Daptomycin Novel oxazolidinone antibacterial agents	Optimized for inhibiting bacterial growth	Only two new clasess of antibiotics had been developed in the past 20 years Not a priority for the pharmaceutical companies Scaffolds are scarce
Develop new types of antimicrobials	Antimicrobial peptides Bacteriophages	New targets, new action mechanisms	Antimicrobial peptides: expensive, toxic, and subject to proteolysis Bacteriophages: attacked by the immune system, prone to develop resistance
Develop new anti-virulence drugs	Quorum sensing inhibitors Inhibitors of bacterial secretion systems	Targeting virulence instead of growth potentially could decrease resistance	Quorum sensing inhibitors: resistance mechanisms had been found Not effective against some clinical strains
Target resistance mechanisms	Multidrug efflux pumps inhibitors	Will allow the re-utilization of already non-effective antibiotics	Bacteria usually have several simultaneous drug resistance mechanisms
Drug repurposing for antibacterial and anti-virulence drugs	Ga containing compounds 5-FU Ciclopirox Diflunisal Statins Pentetic acid	Avoiding the high costs and long development times of novel antimicrobials Known pharmacological properties, known side effects, doses, interactions with other drugs, etc New targets, new action mechanisms Ample repertoire, high versatility Effective against several recalcitrant pathogens, including MDR.	Not optimized for antibacterial or antivirulence effects Ga containing compounds: their broad spectrum activity could be counterproductive damaging healthy host tissues, particularly fast growing cells with high iron acquisition 5-FU: high toxicity