Infection with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) can cause symptoms ranging from mild skin infections to more severe disease in various organs, even among healthy individuals.The ability of this pathogen to escape our immune arsenal and overcome antibiotic therapy poses a challenge to preventing their spread and treating the related symptoms.In ′Bench to Bedside′, Scott Kobayashi and Frank DeLeo explore new approaches for vaccine development that focus on antigens required for establishment of disease.Studies with infected mice immunized against S. aureus coagulases-important for abscess formation and bloodstream infection-suggest such an approach may be used to reduce bacterial load and protect against severe disease in humans.In ′Bedside to Bench′, Michael Otto examines a large human study where the presence of genes encoding Panton-Valentine leukocidin toxin (PVL) in community-associated MRSA did not correlate with complicated skin structure infections-a result opposing the widespread notion that PVL is the primary CA-MRSA virulence factor.