Carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP), smokeaers.shop a pathogen that causes severe nosocomial infections and yields a high mortality rate, poses a serious threat to global public health due to its high antimicrobial resistance.Bacteriophages encode polysaccharide-degrading enzymes referred to as depolymerases that cleave the capsular polysaccharide (CPS), one of the main virulence factors of K.pneumoniae.In this study, we identified and characterized a new capsule depolymerase K19-Dpo41 from K.pneumoniae bacteriophage SH-KP156570.
Our characterization of K19-Dpo41 demonstrated that this Incense depolymerase showed specific activities against K19-type K.pneumoniae.K19-Dpo41-mediated treatments promoted the sensitivity of a multidrug-resistant K19-type K.pneumoniae strain to the bactericidal effect of human serum and significantly increased the survival rate of Galleria mellonella infected with K19-type K.pneumoniae.
Our results provided strong primary evidence that K19-Dpo41 was not only effective in capsular typing of K19-type K.pneumoniae but promising in terms of developing new alternative therapeutic strategies against K19-type CRKP infections in the future.