Ingenious. The vaccine attacks the toxins instead of the bug. This should dramatically reduce the possibility of resistance...
They show that the anti-toxin vaccine almost completely protected lab animals whose lungs were infected with multiple strains of staph resembling those of human infections, including drug-resistant strains like MRSA.
The vaccine protected the animals even when infected with very high doses of bacteria. Not only did it prevent deaths, but 7 days after vaccination, there were no traces of the bacteria in the animals' lungs.
Previous attempts to prevent human infection have used a vaccine that targets cell-surface antigens or proteins. In the current study, the team showed that using this kind of vaccine actually increases the severity of infection.