NeACT an alternative to antibiotic therapy

Satwik Majumder, Ph.D. student, McGill University

Supervisor – Dr Saji George, McGill University, CRIPA member

Co-supervisor – Dr Marie-Odile Benoit-Biancamano, University of Montreal, CRIPA member

Swine and Poultry Infectious Diseases Research Center (CRIPA), financed by the “Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies”

Article published in the magazine Porc Québec in July 2023

Summary: Antibiotic resistance, the ability of bacteria to adapt against antibiotics is a global concern responsible for treatment failures and fatality and thus warrants alternate management strategies. Nanotechnology-enabled Antibacterial Combination Therapy (NeACT) has shown the potential to counter this issue and be an alternative to antibiotic therapy in animal agriculture.

Is it really an alternative or more a new way to target antibiotic delivery closer to the bacteria and a booster of antibiotic efficiency?

Have you come across a prescribed antibiotic that used to be effective against an infection just a few years ago and isn’t effective anymore? Why is it so? Well, antibiotics involve medicines that are supposed to treat bacterial infections, however, over time certain groups of bacteria get adapted to these medicines causing treatment failures and socioeconomic burdens. In the scientific world, we term this adaption, antibiotic resistance (ABR). ABR is a severe concern throughout the world, and if not taken seriously may lead to 10 million deaths costing $100 trillion per annum by 2050. Interestingly, around 70% of the antibiotics that are medically important for public health are sold for veterinary purposes. Moreover, bacteria that may get resistant to antibiotics administered to animals can transmit to humans either through the food supply chain or through direct interactions. The most common examples of such transmission are Listeriosis, Salmonellosis, etc. thus, depicting the necessity for alternate infection management strategies.

Swine and Poultry Infectious Diseases Research Center (CRIPA) has dedicated scientific research to developing sustainable approaches to counter ABR bacteria in poultry and swine with the ultimate goal to promote public and animal welfare. Dr Saji George, Dr Marie-Odile Benoit-Biancamano and myself have been budding researcher who got a wonderful opportunity to work on this noble cause.

Sun Tzu, the author of “ The Art of War” once quoted, “ Knowing the enemy is half the battle won” fits perfectly to our scenario where understanding bacterial behavior is crucial before developing alternate strategies. In the last two years, I have studied a library of bacteria from swine of Quebec-based farms for mechanisms associated with ABR and pathogenicity (ability to cause a disease). Nanotechnology that deals with particles that are 1/1016th of a tennis ball in size have shown credible application in the precise delivery of drugs in biological systems due to their small size, high stability, surface area, reactivity, strength, etc. compared to larger materials. Applying this concept, a patent-pending Nano-enabled Antibacterial Combination Therapy (NeACT) with antibiotic-adjuvant combinations was developed (adjuvant are designed molecules that increase the efficiency of antibiotic). By employing a target-specific delivery at the infection site, NeACT significantly enhances the potency of those antibiotics against which bacteria showed resistance initially. Until now, the NeACT has been tested on Caco-2 human-epithelial cells (or go simpler: intestinal human cells) and Caenorhabditis elegans (a tiny worm) which mimics intestinal infection conditions. I intend to analyze the efficiency of NeACT against Salmonella-mediated intestinal infection in swine.

Overall, the NeACT shows potential as an alternative to antibiotic therapy and warrants its application in veterinary agriculture to combat ABR.

Figure. Schematic illustration of intestinal infection in swine, the transmission of antibiotic-resistant (ABR) bacteria to humans, and the promising potential of Nano-enabled Antibacterial Combination Therapy (NeACT) to combat ABR. The image was created using Biorender.com.