C. elegans for anti-infective discovery

•The model host C. elegans is becoming more popular in infectious disease research.•It is broadly used as an in vivo screening model for new antimicrobial agents.•It can also identify compounds that affect virulence or alter the immune response.•It is also used to test compound toxicity and discover antihelminthic agents.•Its main advantage is its amenability for high-throughput screens.

Widespread use of antimicrobial agents has led to the emergence of multidrug resistant pathogens, which are becoming increasingly common in clinical practice. This underscores the need to discover novel anti-infective compounds. The soil-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has proved to be an excellent model host in the search for such compounds. Indeed, this alternative host is successfully being used to identify traditional microbicidal agents, including antihelminthic compounds, as well as novel agents that attenuate microbial virulence or enhance the host's immune response. Thanks to numerous advantageous features, including its amenability to high-throughput automated screens that allow for the detection of bioactive products among thousands of tested substances, the C. elegans model is now in the spotlight of scientific attention.