Fig. 6: Bacterial products after phage lysis did not affect epithelial cell integrity in vitro.
a Experimental plan created in BioRender. Nouailles, G. (2025) https://BioRender.com/wg3zy88. HPAEpiC monolayers in ECISTM array wells were washed with antibiotic-free medium followed by (i) incubation with supernatants of the infection assay (see Fig. 5) or (ii) supernatants of mechanical lysed bacteria for 12 h (see Fig. 7); or (iii) followed by infection with PAO1 (MOI 1) and treatment with meropenem (MIC = 1 µg/mL), the Pseudomonas-specific phage cocktail, or the combination of both in indicated concentrations for 72 h (see Fig. 8). Cells incubated with different dosages of LPS (P. aeruginosa 10; Sigma-Aldrich) serves as positive controls for released endotoxins in the supernatants (~1 ng/mL LPS = 10 EU/mL endotoxins). Untreated Control are only HPAEpiC, same dataset in each figure. b–e Means of normalized resistance (900 Hz) versus time curves or f normalized resistance (900 Hz) of 120 min time point tested by two-way ANOVA with Tukey´s multiple comparisons test: *p < 0.05 are shown; n = 3–4 independent experiments, while each condition was run in triplicates per experiment. b n5µg/ml = 3, all other groups n = 4 (c–f) nUntreated control = 4, all other groups n = 3. f Data are displayed as mean ± SD. Color coding for groups: Control group: black, Meropenem group: shades of green, Phages group: shades of blue; Combination group: shades of orange; LPS group: shades of red. ECIS electric cell-substrate impedance sensing, EU endotoxin unit, HPAEpiC human primary alveolar epithelial cells, LPS lipopolysaccharide, MIC minimum inhibitory concentration, MOI multiplicity of infection. P-values were adjusted for multiple testing, exact p-values in order of appearance: f 12 hpi Untreated vs. Meropenem 50 × MIC: p = 0.0102. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
