{"id":9707,"date":"2015-01-20T11:49:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T16:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=9707"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:07:04","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:07:04","slug":"the-bugs-in-your-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=9707","title":{"rendered":"The Bugs in Your Drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"UNC<\/a>
UNC biologist Elizabeth Shank examines a petri dish.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

W<\/span>hen it comes to fighting disease, bacteria do it better. Not just antibiotics, but immunosuppressants, anti-fungal creams, some drugs for malaria, and many anti-cancer agents come from compounds made by\u00a0bacteria.<\/p>\n

\u201cBacteria don\u2019t get malaria. They don\u2019t get cancer,\u201d says UNC\u00a0<\/span>biologist Elizabeth Shank. \u201cWe don\u2019t really know what bacteria are doing when they make these\u00a0things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shank pulls up an electron-microscope image of a grain of sand, blown up so large you can see individual bacteria crawling on the surface. There might be thousands of bacteria living on one grain of sand. What happens when they\u2019re packed in so close\u00a0together?<\/p>\n

For years, scientists have described bacteria as making weapons to fight each other. A better analogy, Shank thinks, would be bacteria sitting in a crowded waiting room. \u201cWhat happens in a waiting room? You talk to the person next to you. You overhear someone else\u2019s conversation. You smell someone\u2019s lunch, and then you get hungry. All of that is a lot like what goes on the microbe world,\u201d she\u00a0says.<\/p>\n

Shank thinks that once we understand how bacteria use chemical compounds to communicate, we\u2019ll be able to step into the conversation. Instead of wiping out bacteria en masse with antibiotics, we\u2019ll tell bacteria to stay or go, quiet down or wake up. And her lab has started learning some of these basic\u00a0commands.<\/p>\n

Scientists haven\u2019t noticed these more peaceful microbe messages because they\u2019ve been looking for signs of violence, Shank says. In the quest for more and stronger antibiotics, drug companies threw large amounts of different compounds at bacteria to see what would kill\u00a0what.<\/p>\n

\"Bacillus<\/a>
Bacillus subtilis, grown for four days on a biofilm-inducing agar medium at 30\u00b0 F. Image courtesy of Shank lab.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By 2014, we\u2019ve learned that the widespread use of antibiotics breeds more and more dangerous bugs. Dangerous bacterial infections have always been around, explains UNC<\/span> School of Medicine researcher Rita Tamayo, but in the past 20 years they\u2019ve become much more common. There are several infections patients often get in hospitals, with C. difficile<\/em> and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus <\/em>(MRSA<\/span>) being the most common. \u201cC. difficile <\/em>has picked up even more with the appearance of so-called super-virulent strains\u2014epidemic strains that seem to be better adapted to the intestine, or for causing disease, or producing more toxins,\u201d Tamayo\u00a0says.<\/p>\n

So Shank thinks it\u2019s time to take a subtler approach than finding bacterial compounds to kill other bacteria. Since she came to UNC<\/span> in 2013, she\u2019s been throwing bacteria together in different combinations to see what happens when bug A, bug B, and bug C are packed in a small space together. Yes, sometimes they\u2019ll just start trying to destroy each other. But a lot of times, the relationships between bugs are more\u00a0complex.<\/p>\n

For example, one bacterium might put out a substance that triggers other bacteria to go into a spore state\u2014a kind of hibernation mode where bacteria don\u2019t do much of anything but are very hard to kill. \u201cThese spores are resistant to most commercial disinfectants, which is one of the reasons they\u2019re a big problem in hospitals,\u201d Tamayo says. \u201cYou can kill them with bleach, but not with products like hand sanitizer. The spores persist, and the next susceptible person gets\u00a0infected.\u201d<\/p>\n

She and Shank are searching for bacterial compounds that have this effect, because they might be the key to preventing, or curing, some of the nastiest gut infections. \u201cSay you get a massive dose of antibiotics,\u201d Shank explains. \u201cC. difficile<\/em> can form spores, so it survives the antibiotics by going completely dormant. Normally your good bacteria would fight it off, but all your good bacteria have been killed by the antibiotics.\u201d When those C. diff<\/em> spores wake up, they cause life-threatening\u00a0infections.<\/p>\n

After researchers learn how to use compounds to make bacteria form spores, someday we may be able to put those compounds in a drug to tell bugs like C. diff<\/em> to keep hibernating until the good bacteria come back. Or we could use a compound to make bad bacteria come out<\/em> of the spore state, making them easier to\u00a0kill.<\/p>\n

To get from a bacterial compound to a drug, first you need to figure out how to make a lot<\/em> of the compound, says Scott Singleton, a researcher in the UNC<\/span> Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Then you must show that the compound will do the same thing in the real world that it does in the lab. Then comes the third, most important step: making sure the drug is safe for\u00a0humans.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery few big pharma companies do research, development,and<\/em> sales\u2014the whole soup-to-nuts of drug production,\u201d Singleton says. Most drug-discovery work on antibiotics now goes on in small biotech companies such as his own startup, Synereca. \u201cOur approach is to look for molecules that make antibiotics more effective, so that bacteria that are becoming resistant can be killed again, or so you can take an antibiotic at a lower dose that doesn\u2019t kill bacteria so indiscriminately,\u201d he\u00a0says.<\/p>\n

Beyond taking drugs, scientists want to use bacterial products as coatings outside the body. In hospitals, for example, bacteria on catheters are one of the major sources of infections. It\u2019s hard to keep catheters clean, but a coating of a compound that tells bacteria not to stick could help. Or, Shank says, imagine deliberately coating a catheter with harmless bacteria to crowd out the bad\u00a0ones.<\/p>\n

Or think of your teeth\u2014plaque is a buildup of bacteria, some of which produce acid that eats away tooth enamel. A bacterial compound could signal the acid-making bacteria not to stick, so that they get rinsed or brushed\u00a0away.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re just beginning to understand how much stuff bacteria can make, Shank says. \u201cThere are bacteria we\u2019ve studied for 50 years, and people say, \u2018Oh, yeah, those bacteria make four really cool compounds.\u2019 Then we look at their genes, and actually they have genes to make 30-something different\u00a0compounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists tend to grow bacteria in isolation in the lab, and the bugs probably make their full library of compounds onlyaround other bacteria<\/em>, Shank says. So she\u2019s busy culturing different bugs together in the lab, to see what they do in close proximity to each\u00a0other.<\/p>\n

What are all those extra compounds? They could be anything, Shank says. The next great antibiotic, the next anti-cancer drug. We won\u2019t know until we\u00a0look.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Elizabeth Shank is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC<\/span>. Rita Tamayo is an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the UNC<\/span> School of Medicine. This research is funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in the National Institutes of Health. The work finding previously unknown bacterial compounds is a collaboration with the lab of Albert Bowers, an assistant professor in UNC<\/span>\u2019s Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Scott Singleton is an associate professor, also in the Eshelman School of\u00a0Pharmacy.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Susan Hardy | Endeavors<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to fighting disease, bacteria do it better. Not just antibiotics, but immunosuppressants, anti-fungal creams, some drugs for malaria, and many anti-cancer agents come from compounds made by bacteria.<\/p>\n

\u201cBacteria don\u2019t get malaria. They don\u2019t get cancer,\u201d says UNCbiologist Elizabeth Shank. \u201cWe don\u2019t really know what bacteria are doing when they make these things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9707"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47154,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9707\/revisions\/47154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}