This Biotherapeutic May Protect Your Gut Bacteria From Antibiotics

The team administered eLBP to mice that were orally fed an ampicillin antibiotic. The team found that mice undergoing the biotherapeutic treatment had much lower levels of gut microbial loss and they also fully recovered within three days. Mice that only received the antibiotic showed a much larger loss of gut microbe diversity, and they weren’t able to recover the microbial population. The eLBP doesn’t affect the concentration of antibiotics like ampicillin in the bloodstream, which means the antibiotic can travel to its destined location in the body and do the required job.

The team also handled one of the most common after-effects of disrupted gut microbe diversity after taking antibiotics, which is the takeover of freshly vacated space in the gut microbiota by harmful bacteria such as Clostridioides difficile. This opportunistic bacteria causes issues like diarrhea, inflammation, and bowel diseases. During the tests on mice, it was found that the eLBP also stopped the uncontrolled multiplication of harmful bacteria like C. diff.

“This is one of the strongest examples of an engineered living cellular therapy tackling a pressing clinical problem coming out of academia thus far,” research lead James Collins was quoted as saying. The team is now preparing for short-term and inexpensive clinical trials for the biotherapeutics method to handle antibiotic side effects. The research also aims to tackle the issue of antibiotic resistance and other illnesses where dysbiosis is at the heart of the problem. The study was published Nature Biomedical Engineering.