The human gut is home to thousands of species of bacteria, and some of those bacteria have the potential to treat a variety of gastrointestinal diseases. Some species may help to combat colon cancer, while others could help treat or prevent infections such as C. difficile.
One of the obstacles to developing these "living biotherapeutics" is that many of the species that could be beneficial are harmed by oxygen, making it difficult to manufacture, store, and deliver them. MIT chemical engineers have now shown that they can protect those bacteria with a coating that helps them to survive the manufacturing process.
In a study appearing today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers showed they could use the coating on a strain of E. coli as well as another species that may aid in digestion of plant starches. The coating could be applied to many other species as well, they say.
"We believe this coating could be used to protect pretty much any microbe of interest," says Ariel Furst, the Raymond and Helen St. Laurent Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering and the senior author of the new study. "We think there are microbes out there that can help with a variety of diseases, and that we can protect them for manufacture and production."
https://phys.org/news/2021-12-biotherapeutics.html