United States – New approaches to finding new antibiotics have emerged this year from the diverse microbial community that resides in the human gut, researchers say.
Apparently, combining the aqueous molecules derived from the gut microbiome studies with the existing antibiotics has produced results that may lead to a new platform of the drugs, according to the study’s first author, Marcelo Torres, a research associate in bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, as reported by HealthDay.
A New Class of Antimicrobial Compounds
“Interestingly, these molecules have a different composition from what has traditionally been considered antimicrobial,” Torres explained in a university news release. “The compounds we have discovered constitute a new class, and their unique properties will help us understand and expand the sequence space of antimicrobials.”
The Urgent Need for New Antibiotics
Medical science today is involved in deadly combat with dangerous bacteria that, over time, produce biofilms around lifesaving antibiotics. Although some dangerous germs are far from becoming completely untouchable, they may be killed only by one or two types of drugs, and new kinds of antibiotics are needed urgently.
The lab carrying out the new research is run by senior author César de la Fuente. He holds an assistant professor position at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and works in the field of bioengineering.
Specifically, Torres and de la Fuente assumed that the human digestive system could be a source of new strong antibiotics since bacteria located within the gastrointestinal tract were fighting for their existence.
Harnessing the Power
“It’s such a harsh environment,” de la Fuente said in a university news release. “You have all these bacteria coexisting but also fighting each other. Such an environment may foster innovation.”
Maybe the time has come to define the molecular implements these germs use in that fight, he thought to himself. It is at this point that the biologist de la Fuentes said, “That’s when biology really comes up with innovative solutions.”
Mining Biological Data for New Antibiotics
Thus, the de la Fuentes lab examined the gut microbiota samples collected from close to 2,000 individuals.
“One of our primary goals is to mine the world’s biological information as a source of antibiotics and other useful molecules,” de la Fuente said. “Rather than relying on traditional, painstaking methods that involve collecting soil or water samples and purifying active compounds, we harness the vast array of biological data found in genomes, meta-genomes, and proteomes [of microbes]. This allows us to uncover new antibiotics at digital speed.”
They chose to investigate peptides produced by the gut bacteria, which are amino acid proteins and which have previously been employed in the formulation of antibiotics. Altogether, they evaluated more than 400,000 peptides for their possible application in antibiotic therapy.
Promising Results
Gradually, this number was reduced to 78 proteins that appeared to be suitable for testing against bacterial cultures in the laboratory.
However, a little over half the peptides did have some degree of activity in inhibiting bacterial growth.
Among them, prevotellin-2 showed the same efficacy in counteracting bacterial infection as an FDA-approved antibiotic currently used against multidrug-resistant infections.
Surprising to the investigators, they identified prevotellin-2. “I was very surprised, honestly,” said Ami S. Bhatt, co-senior author of the study and an assistant professor of medicine and genetics at Stanford, as reported by HealthDay.
“This suggests that mining the human microbiome for new and exciting classes of antimicrobial peptides is a promising path forward for researchers and doctors, and most especially for patients,” she said.
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