from the little-fleas-have-lesser-fleas-upon-their-backs-to-bite-them... dept.
Researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Nottingham have found a novel way of killing harmful bacteria that cause infection — setting predator bacteria loose to eat the harmful ones.
Experiments showed a dose of Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus acted like a "living antibiotic" to help clear an otherwise lethal infection.
The animal studies, published in Current Biology , suggested there would be no side effects.
[...] Dr Michael Chew, from the Wellcome Trust medical research body, said: "It may be unusual to use a bacterium to get rid of another, but in the light of the looming threat from drug-resistant infections the potential of beneficial bacteria-animal interactions should not be overlooked.
"We are increasingly relying on last-line antibiotics, and this innovative study demonstrates how predatory bacteria could be an important additional tool to drugs in the fight against resistance."
Related Stories
Antibiotic resistance is one of medicine's most pressing problems. Now, a team from Korea is tackling this in a unique way: using bacteria to fight bacteria.
Before the discovery of penicillin in 1928, millions of lives were lost to relatively simple microbial infections. Since then, antibiotics have transformed modern medicine. The World Health Organization estimates that, on average, antibiotics add 20 years to each person's life. However, the overuse of antibiotics has put pressure on bacteria to evolve resistance against these drugs, leading to the emergence of untreatable superbugs.
Now, researchers at South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) aim to fight fire with fire by launching predatory bacteria capable of attacking other bacteria without harming human cells. "Bacteria eating bacteria. How cool is that?" asks Professor Robert Mitchell, the team leader. He and his colleagues are also developing a natural compound called violacein to tackle Staphylococcus, a group of around 30 different bacteria known to cause skin infections, pneumonia and blood poisoning. Some Staphylococcus bacteria such as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) are resistant to antibiotics, making infections harder to treat.
Violacein is a so-called 'bisindole': a metabolite produced by bacteria from the condensation of two molecules of tryptophan (an essential amino acid used in many organisms to ensure normal functioning and avoid illness and death). This compound is vibrant purple in colour and of interest to researchers for its anticancer, antifungal and antiviral properties. Researchers have discovered that it can stop bacteria from reproducing, and even kill the multidrug resistant bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, when used in the right doses. It also works well in conjunction with other existing antibiotics.
Previously on SoylentNews: Predatory Bacteria could be a New Weapon Against Superbugs
University of Sheffield and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) scientists have discovered several new related (dinuclear RuII) compounds which visualize and kill gram-negative bacteria, such as E. coli (note - no word on whether it works on synthetic E.coli)
Bacteria are classified generally by what type of staining works on them using a method developed in the 1800's by Hans Christian Gram. 'Gram-negative' bacteria retain a stain color that shows them as a pinkish red coloring, these bacteria have cell walls that make it difficult to get drugs into them and many gram-negative bacteria have become significantly or even completely resistant to available drug treatments.
A new drug in the difficult gram-negative space is particularly important. Drug resistant bacteria already cause the deaths of over 50 thousand people a year in the US and EU alone, and as many as 10 million people a year could die worldwide every year by 2050 due to antibiotic resistant infections.
Doctors have not had a new treatment for gram-negative bacteria in the last 50 years, and no potential drugs have entered clinical trials since 2010.
The new drug compound has a range of exciting opportunities. As Professor Jim Thomas explains: "As the compound is luminescent it glows when exposed to light. This means the uptake and effect on bacteria can be followed by the advanced microscope techniques available at RAL.
"This breakthrough could lead to vital new treatments to life-threatening superbugs and the growing risk posed by antimicrobial resistance."
The studies at Sheffield and RAL have shown the compound seems to have several modes of action, making it more difficult for resistance to emerge in the bacteria.
Better yet
Mammalian cell culture and animal model studies indicate that the complex is not toxic to eukaryotes, even at concentrations that are several orders of magnitude higher than its minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC).
The researchers plan to test the compounds against additional multi drug resistant bacteria next.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @11:41AM
Engineer bacteria to kill White people.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @11:50AM
setting predator bacteria loose to eat the harmful ones.
What could go wrong? After all, introducing a new species to control an unwanted one always worked so well.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @12:04PM
Don't worry, the gorillas will freeze to death.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @01:33PM
At best, that would establish a new food chain hierarchy:
Pathogenic bacteria draw their strength from utilizing host's tissue as their food, but predatory bacteria would have a lot less provisions on their side, unless they too become pathogenic. So, predatory species never completely eradicate their food source, they only tend to keep them at level sufficient for their own subsistence.
Because of that, none of "natural enemy" ideas would work perfect. Another approach would be "dead weight" approach: to introduce some very efficient but benign saprophyte bacteria which would steal food before pathogens' figurative noses faster then the dangerous toxin-secreting bugs could lap up what their toxins teared down. I believe that "wound cleaning worms" therapy does exactly that: worms eating food of bacteria before bacteria get to eat it up, hurting their rate of reproduction - the rate of turning our flesh into more bacteria. The same approach could be used on a microscopic level. In fact, don't we have our own kind of leukocytes to do such a mop-up? Perhaps we could boost them up somehow?
Antibiotics are a good idea, but we would need to pick another winner of microbe mortal combat contest every season. However, our way of fighting bacteria would render useless any means we can get:
Out in the wild, natural antibiotics are never used to corner and attempt to extinct any particular microbe; they are used to deter competition and create isolated private spaces for their wielders.
Then, human medical researchers come along, they isolate, analyze, and produce, in global-biosphere-significant quantity, what was essentially some organism's secret super-weapon of last resort, and force all microbes on Earth to learn the new ropes to survive. I guess that original natural source of the chemical just goes extinct after they do learn the new ropes.
We need to make antibiotics very, very expensive just to make them work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @02:57PM
If it doesn't work, doctors can always advise patients to drink hard liquor to kill the predator bacteria. Of course, some patients have already taken this course of action on their own.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Francis on Monday November 28 2016, @03:17PM
That's a potentially serious problem with this approach. We as a species have had a rather poor track record of changing food chains to fit our whims. I'm not sure why we would expect to do better by introducing one at the microscopic level than removing ones at the macroscopic level.
There's tons of ways in which this could go wrong, including wiping out the wrong species, the species mutating in a way that causes us harm or the species taking on abilities that weren't there to begin with.
At some point, they need to just stop. The bacteria theory is what's causing these problems and the resulting lunacy. If they're concerned with super-bacteria, we already have narrow band antibiotics in the form of phages that can do that job safely without damaging the other bacteria. What's more, if we stopped killing all the bacteria we find, the super-bacteria wouldn't be created at such an alarming rate and when created, they'd have to actually compete for resources rather than start with a largely clean growing medium.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @12:03PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @01:29PM
My understanding is that phage treatment tends to be a non specific blend of biologically diverse phages -- ie something that is against the philosophy of the FDA (take a single well researched checmical in exact known dose etc). My knowledge is a couple of years out of date, but from what I remember a phage treatment in principle is no problem to get approval for but the standard mystery blend isnt going to pass muster.
Some thing with bacteria, given a single well known strain I cant see approval being much of a problem, bearing in mind the massive pain it is to get *anything* approved that is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @03:25PM
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday November 28 2016, @07:43PM
FWIW, viruses typically mutate at a much faster rate than bacteria. This is because their genetic system is essentially missing proofreaders. And that's because the replication isn't being done by their own mechanics, but rather by a subverted host. So the cost of a false replica is less, and they also didn't build the machine. There may be exceptions, I'm no microbiologist, but I haven't heard of any.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @02:52AM
Phage do mutate faster than bacteria, but bacteria have an adaptive response (CRISPR) that can compensate for the difference. Also, many phage can go into a dormant state and protect bacteria from being infected with similar strains of the virus
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @03:21PM
I don't know why she swallowed a fly. I guess she'll die.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday November 28 2016, @05:51PM
This reminds me of the Asian folklore: "The traditional preparation of gu poison involved sealing several venomous creatures (e.g., centipede, snake, scorpion) inside a closed container, where they devoured one another and allegedly concentrated their toxins into a single survivor."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu_(poison) [wikipedia.org]
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