Video: Streptococcus salivarius K12 BLIS in the Treatment of Oral Cavities and Otitis Media
Posted 9th June 2017 by Jane Williams
Robert Osgood, Program Director and Associate Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, was interviewed about his work on the oral probiotic, Streptococcus salivarius K12 BLIS.
Read the transcript:
Can you tell us about your work?
With the probiotics, what I’m doing is taking a look at Streptococcus salivarius K12 BLIS. This is a probiotic that has been shown in the past to have some antibacterial activities against selected organisms, so my work was to see if this organism could also be beneficial against killing organisms of the oral cavity that promote cavities, as well as some of the oto-pathogens in the ear.
What we’ve done with our research is to actually prove that K12 BLIS indeed is capable of killing Streptococcus mutans, all of the serotypes c, e, f, and k, as well as non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus pneumonia, and Moraxella catarrhalis, that routinely causes otitis media.
How does Streptococcus salivarius work to reduce optopathogens and not destroy the healthy microbiome in the process?
Well it’s been a mystery for me up until this morning. I was previously under the impression that it caused this bactericidal effect by actually punching holes in the membranes of the opposing organisms very specifically. But yesterday I learned that actually cell wall synthesis is inhibited, from one of the speakers, so I have to update my understanding as to how this is happening. But we believe, according to a speaker yesterday, that cell wall synthesis and inhibition is what’s happening.
Are you working on translating your work into a viable product?
Not just yet, but that is an idea that we keep in the back of our minds for down the road. Streptococcus salivarius K12 BLIS is already commercially available through BLIS Technologies and so I think that has already been taken care of.
I think what’s yet to be discovered by us is what other organisms can this organism, K12, kill, and can we actually produce recombinant forms of the proteins, which I’m told are very difficult to do. But if we can manage to do that, maybe we can expand the applications of the inhibition mechanism.
Are there more applications you foresee for Streptococcus salivarius?
Yes. right now, that organism is used in its natural state, for example in the oral cavity. But what I foresee possibly we could do with this organism, we could discover more of the bacteriocins that it produces. I don’t think that we’ve seen them all just yet.
But once we do, pending research that would prove that these BLIS molecules are not able to harm human cells, we may be able to force this to be used as a topical application, maybe in wounds that are superficial and not too deep to prevent bacterial growth from festering and turning that into more of a serious condition or maybe some other applications that involve a topical use.
The 2nd Probiotics Congress: USA is on November 2 – 3 in San Diego. Click here to view the agenda.
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