Laboratory of Immunobiotechnology, Reference Centre for Lactobacilli (CERELA-CONICET), San Miguel de Tucumán 4000, Argentina
Ramiro Ortiz Moyano
Laboratory of Immunobiotechnology, Reference Centre for Lactobacilli (CERELA-CONICET), San Miguel de Tucumán 4000, Argentina
Juan Martin Vargas
Laboratory of Antimicrobials, Institute of Microbiology “Luis C. Verna”, Faculty of Biochemistry, Chemistry and Pharmacy, National University of Tucuman, San Miguel de Tucumán 4000, Argentina
Kohtaro Fukuyama
Food and Feed Immunology Group, Laboratory of Animal Food Function, Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8572, Japan
Shoichiro Kurata
Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8578, Japan
Vyacheslav Melnikov
Gabrichevsky Research Institute for Epidemiology and Microbiology, 125212 Moscow, Russia
María Ángela Jure
Laboratory of Antimicrobials, Institute of Microbiology “Luis C. Verna”, Faculty of Biochemistry, Chemistry and Pharmacy, National University of Tucuman, San Miguel de Tucumán 4000, Argentina
Haruki Kitazawa
Food and Feed Immunology Group, Laboratory of Animal Food Function, Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8572, Japan
Julio Villena
Laboratory of Immunobiotechnology, Reference Centre for Lactobacilli (CERELA-CONICET), San Miguel de Tucumán 4000, Argentina
In a previous work, we demonstrated that nasally administered Corynebacterium pseudodiphtheriticum 090104 beneficially modulated the respiratory innate immune response and improved the protection against Respiratory Syncytial Virus and Streptococcus pneumoniae in mice. In this work, we aimed to evaluate whether the immunomodulatory 090104 strain was able to enhance the resistance against the respiratory infection induced by hypermucoviscous carbapenemase-producing (KPC-2) Klebsiella pneumoniae strains belonging to the sequence type (ST) 25. The nasal treatment of mice with C. pseudodiphtheriticum 090104 before the challenge with multiresistant K. pneumoniae ST25 strains significantly reduced lung bacterial cell counts and lung tissue damage. The protective effect of the 090104 strain was related to its ability to regulate the respiratory innate immune response triggered by K. pneumoniae challenge. C. pseudifteriticum 090104 differentially modulated the recruitment of leukocytes into the lung and the production of TNF-α, IFN-γ and IL-10 levels in the respiratory tract and serum. Our results make an advance in the positioning of C. pseudodiphtheriticum 090104 as a next-generation probiotic for the respiratory tract and encourage further research of this bacterium as a promising alternative to develop non-antibiotic therapeutical approaches to enhance the prevention of infections produced by microorganisms with multiple resistance to antimicrobials such as KPC-2-producing hypermucoviscous K. pneumoniae strains belonging to ST25.
