Researchers at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have been working on developing lab-designed and created bacteria that could conquer the bad bacteria that is immune to antibiotic therapies. The discovery could pave the way for alternative therapies to antibiotics, allowing humans to rely significantly less on antibiotics than they do now. This would also lead to much slower antibiotic resistance development by these same offending bacteria.
Engineering armour for good gut bacteria against all-conquering antibiotics
Excerpt:
Researchers of synthetic biology based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US have devised a system to protect the gut microbiome from the effects of antibiotics.
The new study, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, reports on the successful use in mice of a “live biotherapeutic” – a genetically engineered bacterium that produces an enzyme which breaks down antibiotics in the gut.
“This work shows that synthetic biology can be harnessed to create a new class of engineered therapeutics for reducing the adverse effects of antibiotics,” says MIT professor James Collins, the paper’s senior author.
