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Novel enzymes target Clostridium perfringens
12 Plays2 years ago
Kane Miller, CEO of Axitan, discusses novel antibacterial enzymes known as endolysins, which his company has developed to target Clostridium perfringens and other pathogens.
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Transcript
Introduction of Host and Guest
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Feed Strategy Podcast.
00:00:08
Speaker
I'm your host, Feed Strategy Senior Reporter Anne Roos.
00:00:12
Speaker
Kane Miller is CEO of Axatan, where he works with novel antibacterial enzymes known as endolycens, which his company has developed to target clostridium perfringens and other pathogens.
00:00:23
Speaker
Miller will speak about this technology and how it could become an alternative to antibiotics at the 2023 Poultry Tech Summit.
00:00:30
Speaker
I recently spoke with him about his work.
00:00:32
Speaker
Here's our conversation.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hi Kane, nice to have you on the podcast.
00:00:36
Speaker
Hi, Anne.
00:00:36
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It's a pleasure to meet you.
00:00:37
Speaker
Thank you for inviting me to do this.
00:00:39
Speaker
I'm excited.
00:00:40
Speaker
Yeah.
Development of Endolycins for Poultry Feeds
00:00:41
Speaker
So tell me what your talk at Poultry Tech Summit will be about.
00:00:45
Speaker
So the talk will be about the work Axatan is doing with regards to the development of endolycines, which for those of you who don't know or are unfamiliar with, an endolycine is a type of enzyme and our work is based on developing these enzymes that can essentially target and kill problematic bacteria.
00:01:10
Speaker
And so in our instance, we've developed them to be added to poultry feeds to to target problematic pathogens in poultry or problematic bacteria.
00:01:23
Speaker
And how did you come
Academic Background and Discovery of Endolycins
00:01:24
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to start working with endolycens?
00:01:27
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That's an interesting question.
00:01:28
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So towards the end of my PhD and then during my one year postdoctoral work, which my PhD was in biochemical engineering and I graduated from the University of London.
00:01:43
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My main focus of research at the time was microalgae biotechnology.
00:01:48
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And I was aware of work being done on endolycines with human applications, both as antibiotic replacements, but also for topical applications and in skincare.
00:02:03
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So I was aware of that research going on.
00:02:06
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And I found it really interesting.
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And the era of antibiotic replacements is it has always kind of been an interest of mine.
00:02:15
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And so I was aware of that going on and I kind of serendipitously or kind of around the same time.
00:02:23
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I was introduced to a leading figure within the poultry industry who became a really close friend of mine, Stuart Ritchie, and we were discussing everything poultry.
00:02:34
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It was a new area to me, so it was very interesting.
00:02:37
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And he essentially said, you know, a major issue in poultry production
00:02:46
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the pathogen Clostridium perfringens.
00:02:50
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So with that in mind, and as I started trying to understand how I could form a company very early on, I wrote a grant in the UK, an Innovate UK grant, which we were ultimately successful in winning.
00:03:09
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And that was based on an endolytine application for Clostridium perfringens.
00:03:15
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which we were successful on.
00:03:17
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And with that and some seed investment money, we founded Axatan and we started working to develop an endolysine-based product for poultry production.
Mechanism of Endolycins against Bacteria
00:03:29
Speaker
How do endolysines target necrotic enteritis?
00:03:32
Speaker
So they don't target necrotic enteritis.
00:03:35
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They target Plostridium perfringens, which is a causative agent of necrotic enteritis.
00:03:40
Speaker
So what they do or what the enzyme does is that I guess it can be split up into...
00:03:48
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two functions.
00:03:50
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And one function of the endolysin is that it binds and it specifically binds to the cell wall of the target pathogen you're looking to address.
00:04:02
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So in our case, it specifically binds to Clostridium perfringens and doesn't bind to other pathogens.
00:04:09
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And then with its catalytic function or its cutting function, it will cut certain bonds within the peptidoglycan layer of the cell.
00:04:21
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And if you imagine essentially a balloon and you may be able to do tiny little holes in it, but essentially if you do enough holes, the internal pressure of the cell or balloon will overcome the strength of the cell wall and it will cause it to pop.
00:04:36
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So that's exactly what they do.
00:04:37
Speaker
They bind and cut to clostridium prephringens, causing them to pop.
00:04:44
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And so we do a lot of that work and that type of characterization of endolycens in our lab in the UK.
00:04:51
Speaker
Interesting.
Potential of Endolycins in Replacing Antibiotics
00:04:52
Speaker
Can endolycens completely replace antibiotics to target clostridium prephringens?
00:04:57
Speaker
That's an interesting question.
00:05:00
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I think for any product to replace antibiotics, it really needs to do two things.
00:05:06
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It needs to act as an insurance policy, I guess, in the event that there's an outbreak of a disease.
00:05:13
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And so in this instance, if you're able to keep Clostridium prephringens at low levels in the environment, then that will help.
00:05:24
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But also, I guess, antibiotics,
00:05:27
Speaker
weren't just about mitigating diseases.
00:05:29
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Antibiotics historically have also had quite a profound impact on formants of boilers or just livestock in general.
00:05:38
Speaker
So what we are looking to do with this product is to
00:05:45
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add additional formulatory components to the endolycense so that it can both minimize the incidence of Clostridium perfringens and also perhaps provide an economic uplift to the end user.
00:05:59
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And that's this formulation with endolycensing is what we call fork three.
00:06:04
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You mentioned livestock there.
00:06:06
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Can this work be translated into any other diseases or species?
00:06:10
Speaker
We think so, yeah.
00:06:11
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A lot of what we do is about essentially finding problematic bacteria, both gram-negative and gram-positive, and looking to see if we can engineer solutions to them.
00:06:25
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So fundamentally, we like to...
00:06:30
Speaker
seek, you know, work with industry.
00:06:33
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And that's a very important thing that we do and try and have as many conversations with people in the industry as possible to understand what their issues are, to understand if there are problematic pathogens that we can address and then seek to develop a product, an endolysin-based product to address them.
00:06:51
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So we think it has quite wide ranging applications beyond poultry.
00:06:57
Speaker
Have you attended Poultry Tech Summit before?
Networking and Insights at Poultry Tech Summit
00:06:59
Speaker
And what do you hope to get out of it this year?
00:07:02
Speaker
No, this will be my first time and I'm very much looking forward to it.
00:07:06
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So I think an important thing for people like me who, you know, have spent the early part of their career in academia and then in a lab-based company is the outreach.
00:07:20
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And we've learned along the way that
00:07:24
Speaker
it's best not to develop products in a bubble.
00:07:28
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It's best to develop products with the input of industry and having those conversations with end users or industry experts really helps you refine your product offering and make sure that what you're offering, there's a market for.
00:07:46
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And I think at Poultry Tech Summit and other
00:07:52
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conferences, being able to speak to many people in a short amount of time is a very efficient way to do it.
00:07:57
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So I'm very much looking forward to it.
00:07:59
Speaker
Yeah, sounds like you'll be in the right place.
00:08:02
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for talking to me.
00:08:03
Speaker
This was a really interesting topic.
00:08:06
Speaker
Well, great.
00:08:07
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:08:08
Speaker
Poultry Tech Summit, scheduled for November 6th through 8th at the Hilton Atlanta Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, will focus on the transition of innovative technologies into commercial applications to advance the poultry industry.
00:08:21
Speaker
Registration is now open at wattglobalmedia.com.
00:08:24
Speaker
You can find a link to the registration page on our website at feedstrategy.com or wattagnet.com.
00:08:30
Speaker
Early bird savings are available until September 29th.
00:08:34
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
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Speaker
I'm Anne Roos for Feed Strategy.