Each experimental group contained 20 mice. To investigate the effects of CHIR-99021 IAL treatment, mice were administered 100 μL of IAL subcutaneously 2 h after infection with S. aureus and then at 12-h intervals thereafter for a total of six doses. The control mice were treated with 100 μL

of sterile PBS on the same schedule. For histopathologic analysis, mice were euthanized with anesthesia followed by cervical dislocation. The lungs were placed in 1% formalin. Formalin-fixed tissues were processed, stained with hematoxylin and eosin, and visualized by light microscopy. The experimental data were analyzed with spss 12.0 statistical software. An independent Student’s t-test was used to determine statistical significance, and a P value < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. As presented in Table 1, the MIC values for IAL that were tested against S. aureus strains were > 1024 μg mL−1, which indicates that IAL does not inhibit the growth of S. aureus. Four α-toxin-producing S. aureus strains were cultured with increasing concentrations of IAL, and the culture supernatants were tested for the ability to perform hemolysis. As shown in Fig. 2a, treatment with IAL repressed the hemolytic activity in culture supernatants. The hemolytic units (HUs) in drug-free

culture fluids were 42.4, 38.2, 110.7, and 46.4 for S. aureus ATCC 29213, BAA-1717, Wood 46, and 8325-4, respectively. When 8 μg mL−1 of IAL was added to the media, the click here Hydroxychloroquine HUs were 1.2, 4.5, 14.1, and 0.6, respectively. Notably, a dose-dependent (1–8 μg mL−1) attenuation of hemolysis was observed in all the tested strains. Furthermore, drug-free culture supernatants preincubated with 8 μg mL−1 of IAL exhibited no difference in HUs, indicating that the reduction in hemolytic activity was not owing to direct interaction of IAL on α-toxin (data not shown). α-Toxin is the major toxin produced by S. aureus and can cause hemolysis of rabbit erythrocytes. Therefore, S. aureus culture supernatants were subjected to Western blot analysis to determine whether the reduced hemolytic activity was attributed to a decrease in the production of α-toxin. Ten nanograms of purified

α-toxin was used as a positive control. As expected, IAL reduced the production of α-toxin in a dose-dependent manner (Fig. 2b). The addition of 1 μg mL−1 IAL resulted in an undistinguished reduction in α-toxin; however, at 8 μg mL−1, no immunoreactive α-toxin antigen could be detected in the supernatants of the tested strains. The results were confirmed with hemolysis assay. Transcription of hla in S. aureus 8325-4 was measured using real-time RT-PCR. The expression of virulence factors in S. aureus is controlled by several global regulatory systems such as Agr, Sar, Sae, and Rot (Cheung & Zhang, 2002). The accessory gene regulator (Agr) is one of the best-characterized global regulatory systems and is known to regulate α-toxin.