Innovations

Wisconsin researcher develops antibiotic alternative

An animal scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has developed an antibiotic-free way to protect animals raised for food from common digestive tract infections.  Professor Mark Cook says the discovery was actually made by accident.  “We were actually trying to create a scenario which would allow us to develop new alternatives to antibiotics.”  They were working with coccidiosis in chickens and found “it fixed the problem that we were one day hoping to fix.”  They went on to test it on larger groups of chickens then in beef cattle, dairy calves and lambs.  “It seems to work everywhere we go,” says Cook.

The researchers discovered that bacteria and many other pathogens have developed a way to in-effect have an animal turn-off its immune system making it susceptible to the infection.  The “switch” is called Interleukin 10 or IL-10.  Cook and animal science associate research Jordan Sand learned how to disable IL-10.  Laying hens are vaccinated with a small peptide, a short protein of about eight amino acids.  Hens make a chemical called macrophage migratory inhibition factor or MIF which is then passed on in their eggs.  “Then we just take those eggs and dry them and it to the animal.”  They can make the vaccine specific to the animal species.  The MIF causes the animal to flip the IL-10 switch, turning their immune system back-on and overriding the bug’s ability to evade the immune system.

The method has been as effective as antibiotics against bacteria, protozoa, Cryptosporidium, single and multi-celled parasites, respiratory infections cattle and certain viruses.  He also says that because they are targeting the immune system and not the infectious agent, the agent will be less-likely to mutate and develop resistance.

Cook says the poultry industry is very interested in the technology and the demand by the broiler industry alone would amount to “millions of tons of feed” and there is no way they could ever make enough product on campus to meet that demand.  He and Sands have formed Ab E Discovery LLC to commercialize their research and they have applied for four patents through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, one of those patents has already been granted.  Cook says they will continue to research more uses for the technology.

He does note that he does not think this would work against the avian influenza virus that has been devastating the poultry industry: “That’s a very different type of organism and unfortunately we don’t have that solution.”

Cook talks about the process:

 

An animation explaining the process is available here: