The discovery of antibiotics is one of the most important ones in the history of humankind. For eighty years the life expectancy of humans has been climbing steadily. During the same period, the standards of living of humans have greatly improved, largely thanks to antibiotics.
Antibiotics are still used effectively to treat bacterial infections. But bacteria are fighting back, developing resistance to our most potent drugs. Infectious diseases by antibiotic-resistant bacteria threaten our existence and our standards of living. The paucity in the development of new, effective antibiotics is sure to result in vastly negative societal consequences.
There is a vital need for new strategies to be explored as antibiotics become obsolete with the inevitable emergence of bacterial resistance.
At General Probiotics we develop a platform for launching a new class of antimicrobials: probiotic bacteria that express and secrete antimicrobial peptides that eliminate antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
We leverage a new generation of synthetic biology techniques to develop novel therapeutics and prophylactics for antibiotic-resistant E. coli, Salmonella, Enterococcus, Staphylococcus, Listeria, Clostridia and Campylobacter.