Protection from unwanted antibiotic effects with synthetic biology (IMAGE)
Caption
Human patients treated with antibiotics suffer damage to their intestinal microbiota (lower branch) which causes its normal composition to be thrown off-balance. Known as “dysbiosis,” this imbalance is a risk factor for a host of autoimmune, metabolic, and neurological diseases. As a solution, treating patients that receive an antibiotic simultaneously with an engineered live biotherapeutic product (eLBP, upper branch) developed at the Wyss Institute and MIT, which degrades antibiotics in the gut, prevents the destructive effects of antibiotics on the intestinal microbiota. As the eLBP does not change the concentration of antibiotics in the blood, they still reach infections everywhere else in the body.
Credit
Wyss Institute at Harvard University
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