Capturing the Power of Van der Waals Zone in the Creation of a Novel Family of Bacteriocin-based Antibiotics
Xiao-Qing Qiu and Margaret A. Riley
from: The Bacteriocins: Current Knowledge and Future Prospects (Edited by: Robert L. Dorit, Sandra M. Roy and Margaret A. Riley). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2016) Pages: 65-80.
Abstract
The clinical potential of bacteriocins has been limited by three main concerns: (i) their narrow range of killing activity, relative to conventional antibiotics, (ii) the notion that these proteins are unlikely to reach or function at the site of most bacterial infections, and (iii) the presumed antigenicity and subsequent toxicity of protein antimicrobials. Our research on a representative of the channel-forming bacteriocins, colicin Ia, reveals that these seemingly insurmountable obstacles are, in fact, no longer relevant. Bacteriocins show no toxicity to human or animal tissues, appear not to induce an immune response by their presence and exhibit high in vivo activity in all animal tissues tested, including the circulatory system. Finally, we report here on a novel bacteriocin-modification platform that permits us to engineer the target specificity of a bacteriocin, expanding or narrowing its killing spectrum. Bacteriocins are poised to usher in a new generation in bacterial infection control read more ...
