This Germ Could Save Your Life

Or at least keep your teeth cavity-free. A growing chorus of medical researchers say our bacteria-killing zealotry is misguided. Instead of fighting bugs, they argue, we should train them to do our bidding and then set them loose in our bodies. The trouble is keeping them there

By Jessica Snyder Sachs Posted 01.31.2008 at 1:24 pm 10 Comments

Waiting Room: Jeffrey Hillman developed a strain of S. mutans tooth bacteria that doesn’t produce enamel-eroding acid. Paul Figura

The trouble was that Hillman now had a true transgenic—an organism that expressed the genes of two different species. The prospect of tests in humans meant that he had to go to the FDA for approval. The FDA eventually referred his case to the National Institutes of Health’s Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, created in 1974 in response to public concern over the safety of interspecies gene transfer. The committee, which includes ethicists and patients as well as scientists and physicians, reviews any application for a transgenic intended to be used outside a sealed laboratory.

In 2004, the committee gave Hillman the green light. Usually, this is enough for full FDA approval. But not this time. FDA regulators asked Hillman to cripple his bug to guarantee that it could be removed should it ever cause problems. “When we asked them what kind of problems, they had no idea,” he recalls. “I guess we were setting a precedent.”

The regulators saw a genetically modified bacteria that was robust enough to take over any person’s mouth, and they were worried about its unchecked spread. Their decision reflected a common criticism of GMO biotherapeutics. “The main problem . . . is that [GMOs] are usually poorly contained,” argues geneticist Joe Cummins. Recently retired from the University of Western Ontario, Cummins is a leading spokesman for the London-based Institute for Science in Society, an anti-GMO lobbying group. “They’re bound to escape and to pollute the systems of people who don’t require therapy.”

So Hillman knocked out more genes, this time rendering his microbe unable to survive without an amino acid that test subjects would need to supply, twice daily, by rinsing with a specially formulated mouthwash. In addition, the agency required that Hillman test on patients wearing full dentures that could be dropped into bleach at the end of a week. The volunteers could not have children in their homes, and their spouses had to wear full dentures as well. And both the volunteers and their spouses had to be robustly healthy and under age 55. “We screened more than 1,000 potential volunteers,” Hillman says, “and we found two.”

The miniature, two-person trial proceeded without a hitch at the end of 2006, with no adverse side effects and complete elimination of the organism at the end of seven days. Last November, past the 10th anniversary of his original FDA application, Hillman received approval to use his crippled transgenic in a larger clinical trial. “Real people with real teeth!” he exults. For safety, the volunteers will spend the weeklong trial in a biocontainment ward.

Should his superbug prove as harmless as it appears, Hillman hopes the FDA will eventually allow him to skip the step where he renders it a nutritional cripple. Users could then dispense with the daily amino-acid mouthwash.

Might the bug then begin spreading from one person’s mouth to the next? It’s unlikely, Hillman says. When he and his labmates colonized their teeth with their GMO’s ancestor, it did not spread to wives and girlfriends, even while remaining in their own mouths for decades.

Proponents like Thaler ask whether such an “uncontrolled release,” if it were to occur, would be a bad thing. “What would it be like for us to have benign versions of Typhoid Mary walking around,” he asks, “spreading their health-enhancing germs?” In some cases, though, uncontrolled release of genetically modified bacteria could lead to disaster, even if the intended effects were nothing but beneficial.

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10 Comments

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ForrestGump

02/05/08 at 8:10 pm

“I honestly think people are more comfortable with the idea of nano-robots scurrying through their bodies than they are of deploying bacteria,” Thaler muses. “But when you think about it, you cultivate your lawn. You’d probably like to cultivate your internal landscape.”

Well said. After we can overcome the hurdles of human timidness toward the implementation of modified bacteria in our bodies, there seems to be an entirely open and new scope of research in terms of productive bacteria. Instead of trying to create new cures and treatments for age old problems, why not manipulate something already in existence and change harmful bacteria into helpful bacteria?

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txt

02/10/08 at 10:01 pm

i think people are more willing to adapt than you think i my self think this is a very posible option for the future.

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Czar

02/13/08 at 9:16 pm

Once we understand the bacteria or virus genome, we could even reprogram them to hunt down other bacteria or viruses such as Flesh eating bacteria and HIV viruses. they can have a set lifetime of only a few days and have their reproductive genes removed or replaced.

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AliveUD

03/06/08 at 1:33 pm

The solution to all of humankind's problems is undoubtedly a natural one. Sunlight, modified bacteria, and algae are our friends. I know it sounds utopian, but seriously, we just need to make nature work for us in a symbiotic way. True, it may mean altering nature through genetic manipulation; but the point is that it can be done.

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berne04

from Aviston, IL

03/08/08 at 12:44 am

We have been talking in my Microbiology class about using viruses to carry the (gene manipulated) cure for diabetes; make the body produce it's own insulin again. This is the wave of the future for treatments. There is a huge potential benefit to gene therapy.

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svseigel

from APO, AE

03/12/08 at 3:47 pm

I was an AP biology teacher In 1993. Back then I asked a friend who was a doctor if some gut microbe couldn't be engineered to deliver insulin. He laughed. He said the naturally occuring bacteria are too well adapted to share space with a suboptimal organism. I countered that we could start with a patient's own flora, but he said simply adding or deleting anything would render it suboptimal.

In 1997 we attended a lecture on genetic medicine at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, the doctor was very sharp and forward-thinking. He said these avenues are "interesting but beyond our reach at present."

In 1999 my wife graduated with a B.A. in microbiology and almost every honor her university confers. Her signature position was that we view microorganisms the wrong way--a very small percentage are pathogens, while a large number are symbiotes--that we need to learn to work with them. Anyway, I asked her to mention my idea to her faculty. When she did, she was ridiculed by the full professors, tolerated by the more recent Ph.D.s, and taken quite seriously by the M.S. level instructors and graduate students. I'm gratified that she stuck with it long enough for us to learn that tenure often seems to impair the mind!

Fast forward to 2008. People are actually talking about my idea; while her idea is far more important. This plethora of Antimicrobial products not only threatens our personal micro-biomes, but it also accelerates resistance. These products should be tightly controlled lest we really do produce superbugs: PATHOGENS!

It's great if we can get friendly bacteria to do good things for us; it's terrible if we end up killing them off every time we use soap, toothpaste, lotion or even drink water!

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Vamphyri

04/06/08 at 9:29 pm

Well, we do have one that eats oil spills then dies of hunger when the source is depleted... Sometimes there are some pretty cool successes.

Naturally our own bodies have bacteria that were not part of our makeup before that do all kinds of things symbiotically - not the least of which is digestion.

The concern is more like the problem in nature when a bacteria or virus gets in a mutated state that causes it to breed fast in a crowded environment and start causing disabilities and death. Don't think for an instant that a genetic 'bug' for good or ill will be the same for everyone, just like some people have large reactions to things like chicken pox and some people get killed by simple diseases on a wide scale.

Just some thoughts :)

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kardelen133 (not verified)

05/26/08 at 8:43 am

Hi all
in the words of homer simpson.... holy crap! or maybe just, crap. you work for popsci, folks... what in the *#@* was that? to begin with, how long did it take you to make the two custom length leather straps? more than five minutes, to be sure. how long did you have to look for a belt with a buckle that size? i have never seen a belt like that in my life. wait, i'm sorry, let's start with who in the *&^% would want to do this in the first place? let's assume that you are actually trying to come up with 5 minute projects that someone might want to attempt, and using that assumption lets assume that even one of you has a little pride in what they do. if either of those statements are true, the video i jsut whatched is either the result of complete indifference, or complete ignorance. if this is where my subscription dollars are going, please do a five minute project teaching me how to unsubscribe.
forum plastik cerrahi saç ekimi lazer epilasyon tüp bebek burun estetigi
thanks.

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godnews

05/27/08 at 3:02 pm

The concept of using what should kill to relieve sickining people by minor modification to the basics of such is very interresting. although it is very hard to understand by many people, but it is the basic truth.
العاب-العاب بنات-العاب تلبيس-العاب طبخ-صور-صور بنات-صور مضحكة
Thanks

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John.k

03/08/09 at 6:04 pm

I think we have a natural, existing, means to to fight tooth decay. I am 73 years old and I have no cavities. I am curious has anyone thought to find out why some people donot have cavities? I eat far too much sugar. I am not being treated with any anticavity agents, including flourides, which I think will be banned someday.