New antibiotics from microorganisms

Background

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have become a global threat to human health, and this has been highlighted by the WHO, among others. The number of new antibiotics has steadily declined over the past few decades, and the lack of effective antibiotics is already reducing the chances of curing several life-threatening bacterial infections in humans. These serious problems are expected to increase dramatically in the near future.

Microorganisms produce so-called secondary metabolites to combat competing bacteria and fungi, among other things, and these molecules can be developed and used as antibiotic preparations. Since the development of the first antibiotic preparations in the 1940s, microorganisms have been the main source of antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections. In recent decades, however, most major pharmaceutical companies have stopped looking for new antibiotics in microorganisms. One reason for this is that it became increasingly difficult to find new substances. As an alternative, attempts have been made to develop and produce fully synthetic antibiotics, which have not been particularly successful so far.

However, the development and improvement of both microbiological and chemical methods has made nature once again an interesting and promising source of new antibiotic substances.

The research project

The main objective of the project is to find new antibiotic secondary metabolites in microorganisms for further development into new antibiotics. We isolate bacteria and fungi from a variety of sources and cultivate them under different conditions. The production of antibiotic substances is investigated through a combination of biological tests against disease-causing bacteria and chemical methods such as preparative HPLC, UHPLC-MS, and NMR. This research project has been ongoing at SLU in Uppsala since 2012.

The project has resulted in the isolation and characterization of a large number of new antibacterial substances, some of which are interesting candidates for further development into antibiotics.

Nine patent applications have been submitted and approved, and a number of scientific articles describing new antibiotic substances or new methods have recently been published: [Broberg et al (2017), Bjerketorp et al (2017), Nord et al (2019), Levenfors et al (2020), Nord et al (2020), Nord et al (2020), Broberg et al (2021), Bjerketorp et al (2021)].