2023-10-01 08:24:00
Researchers from the Applied Toxinology Laboratory at Insituo Butantanyes São Paulo State Health Departmentdiscovered a molecule that showed the potential to combat several types of fungi and bacteria. The study regarding her was published in the scientific journal “Research in Microbiology“.
With the name of Dordelinha, the molecule was synthesized in a pre-clinical phase. Furthermore, the work that involves its identification is the subject of a master’s degree by student Bruna Souza da Silva. Throughout the aforementioned phase, scientists were able to observe that the molecule eliminated the bacteria Escherichia coli and pseudomonas aeruginosa.
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For those who don’t know, these bacteria are considered multi-resistant microorganisms, in addition to being responsible for causing gastrointestinal and lung infections. Dordelina, in turn, was extracted from lactobacillus acidophilus, which is a bacterium that is part of the human microbiota.
Against fungi, the molecule was effective once morest candida albicans, which causes candidiasis. Pedro Ismael da Silva Junior is the coordinator of the study and spoke regarding the news:
Antimicrobial peptides are compounds synthesized by all forms of life, with the aim of protecting themselves from threats and increasing their competitiveness to survive in a specific environment.
It is worth mentioning that the compound is non-toxic and might even become a new antibiotic in the future. Now, the next steps include analyzing which parts of the molecule’s sequence are most important for promoting therapeutic action. In this sense, the objective is to make the molecule smaller, cheaper, effective and safe. Pedro concluded:
The more amino acids the molecule has, that is, the larger it is, the greater the risk of it provoking an antibody response, an immune system reaction. Now, we need to find partners to develop the tests and, in case of positive results, move on to the clinical testing phase.
See too: the preliminary results of the dengue vaccine produced by Butantan and the Alzheimer’s test developed by researchers that identifies the disease in less than ten minutes.
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