Scientists Hijack Bacteria to Make Drugs Easy to Make
AUSTIN, Texas – For more affordable and sustainable drug options than we have today, the drugs we use to treat high blood pressure, pain or memory loss may someday come from engineered bacteria, cultured in vats like yogurt. And thanks to a new bacterial tool developed by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin, the process of increasing drug-making in bacterial cells may be happening more quickly than we think. For decades, researchers have been looking for ways to make drug manufacturing more affordable and sustainable than current pharmaceutical manufacturing processes, many of which rely on plants or petroleum. Using bacteria has been suggested as a good organic alternative, but detecting and optimizing the production of therapeutic molecules is difficult and time-consuming, taking months. In a new paper this week in Nature Chemical Biology, the UT Austin team introduces a biosensor system, derived from the bacterium E. coli, that can be adapted to detect all types of th...