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The human gut contains thousands of species ofbacteria that have the potential to treat a variety of gastrointestinal diseases. Some species may help to fight colon cancer, while others may help treat or prevent infections.
Oxygen is one of the obstacles to the development of living biotherapeutics because it makes it difficult to manufacture, store, and deliver them. MIT chemical engineers have shown that they can protect thosebacteria with a coating that helps them survive the manufacturing process.
The researchers showed they could use the coating on a strain of E coli and another species that may aid in digestion of plant starches. They say the coating could be applied to many other species.
The senior author of the new study is the Raymond and Helen St. Laurent Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering. We think that there are microbes that can help with a variety of diseases, and that we can protect them for manufacture and production.
The lead author is a MIT student. The authors of the paper are Pris Wasuwanich, an MIT undergraduate, and Mariela Rodriguez-Otero, a former MIT Materials Research Laboratory Summer Scholar.
A protective coating.
The majority of the microbes in the human gut are anaerobic. Oxygen is deadly for some people, while others can tolerate it.
It's difficult to test the potential ofbacteria as treatments for human disease because they need to be freeze-dried and formulated as capsules in order to be used therapeutically. In this study, Furst and her colleagues decided to try and protect the anaerobicbacteria by coating them with a material made from metal ion and organic compounds.
The two-dimensional, grid-like sheet is formed when metal and polyphenols are put into a solution. The researchers used iron, which is safe for human consumption, and three polyphenols that are classified as GRAS by the Food and Drug Administration, all of which are safe for consumption.
The material self-assembles into a coating if the solution is also added to it. The coating protects against freeze-drying and manufacturing. The coated cells were able to perform normal cellular activities even though their growth was temporarily stopped.
When exposed to an acidic environment, the coating breaks down and releases thebacteria.
There is a deployment ofbacteria.
The researchers tested the coating on Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron. This species, which is specialized to digest carbohydrates, appears to be more abundant in the gut of healthy people. It has been difficult to study how thesebacteria might promote health if given as biotherapeutics because they are very sensitive to oxygen.
This type of protective coating could be useful for agricultural applications, such as helping to make crops more stress- tolerant. The coating could be used to protect the microbes that are used as vaccines. The vaccine that causes Tuberculosis is difficult to produce and must be stored at low temperatures. Furst says that coating it with a protective layer could make it easier to distribute.
She says that removing the need for cold storage and transport would make a lot of drugs more widely available.
The research was funded by the MIT-Deshpande Center, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at MIT, and the MIT Materials Research Laboratory MRSEC Program of the National Science Foundation.
Gang Fan and his colleagues wrote about the protection of Microbes from Processing Stressors Using Metal–Phenolic Networks in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. There is a DOI titled " 10.1021/jacs.1c09018".
The Journal of the American Chemical Society has information.
The story is being re-posted by MIT News, a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.
A step toward "living biotherapeutics" was retrieved from thephys.org on December 10, 2011.
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