Anti Quorum Sensing Technology
What is Quorum Sensing?
In the early 1970s it was discovered that bacteria possess the ability to communicate with one another. As more research was done it was discovered that chemical signaling molecules, called auto-inducers, produced by each individual bacterium, allow colonies of bacteria to regulate collective behavior. In effect, it allows a colony to function as a single organism. This process of communication is called quorum sensing.
The coordinated group behaviors regulated by quorum sensing are many and diverse. Movement, growth rates and the production of protective chemicals are three such examples. The regulation of virulence - the bacterial actions that cause disease, is another example. This is the function of quorum sensing that is of interest to us, and it is our main area of research.
Bacterial Virulence
Bacteria cause disease in a number of ways:
- By adhering to host cells and impairing the function of those cells.
- By colonizing parts of the body and competing with the cells of the body for nutrients
- By invading host cells and thereby disrupting the host cell membranes
- By inhibiting the immune response of the host
- By the production of toxins which cause tissue damage
Each of these bacterial actions cause the body's immune system to kick into high gear through inflammation, the production of Phagocytes, etc. In general, for disease causing bacteria to be successful, they must exist in large enough numbers to mount an effective defense against this immune response. So they must first exist in a benign state until their numbers are large enough. Quorum sensing is the mechanism that switches bacteria from this benign state to the disease causing state.
Virulence is a coordinated activity. And it is clear that if the quorum sensing system of the bacteria can be disrupted, the disease causing state would be diminished or would not occur.
Quorum Quenching / Quorum Sensing Disruption
Today, about 70 percent of the bacteria that cause infections are resistant to at least one of the drugs most commonly used for treatment. Some organisms are resistant to all approved antibiotics and can only be treated with experimental and potentially toxic drugs. An alarming increase in resistance of bacteria that cause community acquired infections has also been documented, especially in the staphylococci and pneumococci, which are prevalent causes of disease and mortality. In a recent study, 25% of bacterial pneumonia cases were shown to be resistant to penicillin, and an additional 25% of cases were resistant to more than one antibiotic.
The current state of antibiotic affairs is due to the manner in which existing antibiotics work. All current antibiotics aim to kill the individual bacteria in one manner or another. This environmental pressure activates the evolutionary mechanisms that select for resistant strains. In other words, bacteria that are not resistant to the antibiotic are killed off, leaving the resistant organisms to multiply unchecked without competition. This is why resistant strains spread so rapidly and occur so frequently.
Recent research into quorum sensing systems has produced compounds that can disrupt the bacteria's ability to communicate and thereby disable or diminish the bacteria's ability to become pathogenic. The body is therefore not compromised by cell damage, inflammation, toxicity or other detrimental effects of the bacteria. This gives the body time to eradicate the bacteria naturally through normal immune system functions.
The advantage of the quorum sensing disruption approach to controlling infection is that there are no evolutionary forces that select for resistance - there is nothing in the process that would create resistant strains. Since the compounds kill none of the bacteria, any resistant mutations must compete with living, non-resistant individuals. In other words there is no survival advantage to the resistant mutations, and natural selection does not come into play. Resistant strains will be unlikely to occur.
Plant Resources
Over the past 50 years, pharmaceutical companies have devoted hundreds of thousands of hours to researching the antibiotic traits of certain plant extracts. Very little attention, however, has been paid to plant compounds that can disrupt bacterial communications. This is a brand new, wide open field, and it is the focus of our research at QuorumEx. Based in one of the planet's most biodiverse botanical regions - the heart of the Belizean jungle - our lab has derived a panoply of plant extracts, and identified whole plants, that interrupt quorum sensing.
One of our most important discoveries is that a combination of compounds from a given plant is many times more effective than any individual compound. It's as if the plant has an inherent and organized defense system, with each tier picking up where the other left off. Compounds from different plants, in the correct combination, can be more effective still.
We are leaders in the field of natural, plant based anti-quorum sensing research. Our approach is holistic. Our products are natural. Our topical products - liniments, lotions/creams, hydrosols, etc. - and our liquid extracts, are processed in a manner that does not destroy or diminish the phyto-nutients of the plants, or the chemical potency essential to anti-quorum sensing capabilities. Just as importantly, we harvest and prepare our products in a sustainable manner that is non-destructive to the species and the environment.
This is the vision of QuorumEx.