Robotics offer a glimmer of hope in the antibiotics production crisis, says expert

Speaking at the World Antibiotic Awareness Week, Eriko Takano, professor of synthetic biology at The University of Manchester, has given a glimmer of hope in the antibiotics production crisis — robotics!

A report released by the World Health Organisation earlier this year set alarm bells ringing as it listed the growing number of pathogens that threaten global health due to the diminishing drugs capable of treating them. “Indeed, since their 1960s heyday, the production of novel antibiotics has declined markedly and it’s been 30 years since a major new class of antibiotics for clinical use has been discovered,” said Takano. “There are even cases of resistance to Vancomycin, used by doctors as an antibiotic of last resort.”

The reasons surrounding the lacking production of antibiotics are many, including the expense of their development and the complexity and time-consuming nature of finding new compounds that are viable as antibiotics. “Between 80 and 90% of antibiotics are derived from soil dwelling bacteria, actinomycetes. Until recently, scientists believed the possibilities of antibiotics production from many of these microbes were close to exhaustion,” Takano added.

“But thanks to the huge technological advances in recent years, our team at the University of Manchester’s Synthetic Biology Research Centre, SYNBIOCHEM, has been able to marry the strengths of biology with the power of engineering to find new ways to deal with this problem,” he asserted. “Genome sequencing has provided new possibilities of finding potential antibiotic production pathways that are asleep in the genome of potentially every bacterium. Using synthetic biology we are able to rewrite the DNA sequences of the antibiotic biosynthesis pathways and introduce different enzymes for other organisms and then express the result in a given host. Actinomycetes, E. coli, and even yeast can have a part to play in this process and our analysis has shown that using this route, there are many potential pathways to make new compounds.”

However, manipulation of the biosynthesis pathways is time consuming and requires a vast amount of effort. This is where robotics comes into its own, Takano exclaimed. Not only does this technological advance allow researchers to perform work on large volumes but also enables the work to be performed repetitively.

“While a single person can make and test ten compounds in, say, a year, a robot can make thousands,” he summarised. “Thanks to our pioneering technologies, we believe that at the Manchester Synthetic Biology Research Centre, SYNBIOCHEM, there is a strong chance we will be in a position to trial new antibiotics created from synthetic biology in the near future. Our work with the Alderley Park Antimicrobial Resistance Centre — a joint private-public initiative to support and accelerate the development of new antibiotics, is an incredibly important part of the mix, so these drugs can be brought to market quickly.”