Therapeutics

A growing body of literature supports the premise that a significant number of chronic diseases are either caused by bacteria, or bacteria are a trigger in disease causation and progression. The 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for the discovery that gastritis and peptic ulcer disease are caused, not by stress as previously thought, but by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, and thus can be cured with antibiotics.

There is mounting interest in understanding the implications and pathology of clinically important bacteria that cannot currently be cultured in the laboratory. Current tools for the study of these potential pathogens - primarily DNA fingerprinting - are not adequate to provide understanding of the living organism's behavior or its biology.

AthenaBio's Quorum Sensing Quenching™ (QSQ) technology provides an opportunity to cultivate bacteria from clinical samples obtained from patients with diseases in which non-culturable bacteria are implicated. Once established as causative agents, the new bacteria will become targets for the development of new antibiotics and diagnostics.