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13TSB_TIBio: Synthetic Biology for antibiotic discovery and development

Reference	BB/M004910/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Eriko Takano
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	The University of Manchester
Department	Chemistry
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	150,309
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	01/06/2014
End date	31/05/2016
Duration	24 months

Abstract

New antibiotics are urgently needed to combat the emerging critical problem of bacteria resistance. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has estimated that antimicrobial resistance costs the EU about 1.5 billion Euros in healthcare and losses productivity each year. The UK government has made clear actions into fighting antimicrobial resistance with a 5 year Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy Report published in September 2013. To tackle this important problem, this project aims to use synthetic biology as a key technology to discover and develop new antibiotics. The project will overcome the common problems associated with antibiotic discovery from natural sources, such as poor understanding of the antibiotic producer, poor growth characteristics, reproducibility, poor yield and a long time to market. Demuris has identified a promising broad-spectrum antibiotic but it is produced in low quantity. The University of Manchester will collaborate with Demuris, an SME expertise in natural products discovery, together with Croda, a large chemicals company with established routes to market, to fully unlocking the potential of this promising broad-spectrum antibiotic using synthetic biology approaches. Bioinformatics and biosynthetic gene cluster refactoring will be used for optimum expression and for introducing additional diversity of the chemical structure. The optimized biosynthetic machinery will then be introduced into Demuris's optimised production host for maximum yield required for commercialisation. In addition, the methods established in this work will be utilised for the activation of novel silent gene clusters identified from the genome sequence of the broad-spectrum antibiotic producer and the products identified and characterised for potential industrial applications.

Summary

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Impact Summary

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Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Industrial Biotechnology, Microbiology, Pharmaceuticals, Synthetic Biology
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	Innovate UK (TSB) [2011-2015]
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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