GutGuard

Shigella, as one of the most antibiotic-resistant pathogens, poses a great threat to food safety especially in developing areas.

10 million will be subject to mortalities caused by Shigella infection by 2050.

The distribution of antibiotics is the main treatment today.

It is costly and time-consuming.

Side effects include degradation of GI tract microbiome, and the emergence of more antibiotic-resistant strains.

Figure 1 Figure 1 legend
We are in an endless race against pathogens.

Antibiotics are our weapons. Mutations are their strategies for survival.

Now, DKU iGEM team has proposed an alternative to jump out of this race and possibly, go far beyond.

Antibody therapy is a popular topic in therapeutics.

It is different from antibiotics and can be more effective when triggering the host immune system. Figure 2

However, conventional antibodies have a high cost because of the complicated synthesis procedure.

It can also be vulnerable to proteosomes in the GI tract.

Figure 3
Thus we propose a novel method to display nanobodies on the surface of probiotics.

It exploits the natural pathogen inhibition effects of the probiotics.

It also explores possibilities of antibody therapy mass production.

Click on the left menu to learn more.

Figure 4