Probiotics are known for their role in maintaining a healthy gut or restoring the population of “good bacteria” after a heavy course of antibiotics.
Now, they might also be a potentially effective treatment for certain intestinal diseases like Crohn’s disease.
A group of researchers has developed a microgel delivery system for probiotics that protects “good” bacteria while actively eliminating “bad” ones, helping treat intestinal inflammation without side effects.
In the digestive system, a delicate balance exists among bacterial populations. However, when this balance is disrupted, harmful bacteria can dominate the colon, leading to swelling and resulting in colitis.
Some conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease and Crohn’s disease, involve chronic colitis and currently require expensive and non-specific immunosuppressants for treatment.
These drugs sometimes give rise to antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Instead of immunosuppressants, a potential alternative is the delivery of beneficial bacteria, or probiotics, to restore balance.
But for treatment to reach the colon, it must pass through the stomach acid, resist being cleared out by the intestine, and then compete for space with numerous invading bacteria.
Hence, researchers Zhenzhong Zhang, Junjie Liu, Jinjin Shi, and their colleagues developed a delivery system that protects probiotics from digestion and actively combats the microbes causing the disease.
The New Probiotic Delivery System
The researchers combined sodium alginate, tungsten, and calcium-containing nanoparticles into small spherical microgels and coated them with beneficial, probiotic bacteria.
The microgels guarded the bacteria against stomach acid and improved their retention time in the colon. Once in the colon, proteins highly expressed during colitis bound to the calcium and disassembled the gels, enabling the tungsten to escape.
The tungsten inhibited the growth of harmful bacteria, Enterobacteriaceae, by displacing molybdenum in a key enzyme substrate, leaving the probiotics unaffected.
Potential New Treatment for Intestinal Diseases
The team conducted experiments using a colitis mouse model, where the system allowed probiotics to thrive in the intestine without causing any side effects.
Mice with the microgel spheres did not exhibit many colitis hallmarks, such as shortened colons or damaged intestinal barriers, indicating that the delivery system could be a promising treatment strategy.
While the researchers aim to validate the system’s effectiveness in more advanced preclinical models, this work paves the way for innovative treatments using colonizing probiotics.
If you care about gut health, please read studies about a major cause of leaky gut, and fatty liver disease, and eating nuts may help reduce risks of gut lesions and cancer.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about what postbiotics are and how they can improve our gut health, and results showing common dietary fiber may trigger inflammation in the gut and lungs.
The study was published in ACS Central Science.
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