Categories Biofilm, anti-biofilm, anti-biofilm peptides, antiseptic agent, disinfectant agents, antibacterial agents, antimicrobial agent, chemical disinfectants, biocides.
Development Stage Pre-clinical proof of concept and initial results

Our Innovation

We have developed an environmentally-friendly, non-toxic peptide-based mixture which can serve as an antibacterial cleaning agent for killing many types of bacteria rapidly, and efficiently degrading mature biofilm structures.

These easily-synthesized compounds offer a low-cost alternative to chlorine-based and other chemical disinfectants. Excessive use of such chemicals results in highly-resistant bacteria that form biofilms

Technology

The agent consists of a synthesized cocktail of 20-mer random-sequenced peptide mixture.

This random-sequenced peptide mixture demonstrated far more effective anti-biofilm activity towards antibiotic-resistant bacteria, as compared to specific sequence anti-biofilm peptides. Based on what we showed using scanning electron microscopy, we hypothesize that these compounds are able to penetrate the extra-cellular matrix of bacterial biofilm, and kill the bacteria inside the biofilm structure.

Benefits

  • Highly active agent kills bacterial cells and destroys biofilms rapidly and effectively
  • Non-toxic, environmentally-friendly biological agent  
  • Does not require purification, easier and cheaper than synthesizing sequence-specific peptides 
  • Highly efficient, requires low concentration to kill vast amounts of bacteria

Development Milestones

  • The compounds showed strong and broad antimicrobial activity.
  • The compounds showed effective anti-biofilm activity.
  • We are studying the toxicity of our compounds on mouse models.
  • The agent showed low toxicity towards human embryonic kidney cells.

Applications

  • Disinfectant and cleaning agent
  • Hospital environments
  • Biomedical devices
  • Dentistry equipment
  • Biofouling buildup on marine vessels

 

Researcher information: http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/biochemfoodsci722/teachers/zvi_hayouka/

 

PATENT STATUS

Granted US 11,103,547