Antibiotics are the old medicine cabinet standby for treating infections caused by multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, but as antimicrobial resistance continues to mount globally, scientists say there’s a need for new strategies.

While vaccines are a potential answer, achieving an effective way to immunize against multidrug-resistant S. aureus has led scientists down dozens of blind alleys. Ten candidate vaccines that looked promising in preclinical animal studies in recent years failed miserably in human clinical trials.

Now, scientists in China are investigating a way to sidestep the myriad problems that plagued vaccine investigators in the past by choosing not to target a whole antigen. Instead, they say, it’s time to home in on a critical “surface loop” as a vaccine target. The infinitesimal loop is located on the S. aureus antigen known as MntC.