Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The goal of this research is to develop novel and efficient analytical techniques for separating, identifying, and quantifying bacterial lantibiotics. The other objective is to investigate the association of metals with lantibiotics and the potential utilization of these metal-lantibiotic complexes for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. Lantibiotics are a diverse group of heavily modified antimicrobial peptides produced by a wide range of bacteria. They constitute a new group of antibiotics that are being found to ward off infectious diseases against which classic antibiotics are ineffective. Lantibiotics have been used in treating skin infections, for combating pathogenic microorganisms in food, and several have also been characterized for their anti-tumour, anti-cancer and anti-viral activity. Analysis of lantibiotics will be essential for optimization of fermentation, product isolation, process control, determining their optimal dosages, and for determining their concentration in body fluids. Furthermore, an optimized separation of lantibiotics will be advantageous in the screening of food products for drug residues. Studies have indicated that upon chelation with metals, biologically-active compounds become more active in slowing or stopping the growth of cancer and in hampering the growth of bacteria. In addition, their therapeutic potential is enhanced on complexation with metals. With growing interest in lantibiotics as alternative therapeutic agents to classic antibiotics, it is important to investigate how the binding of metal to lantibiotics might expand their therapeutic potential, and possible use in the diagnosis and treatment of pathogenic organisms. To gain this understanding, capillary electrophoresis will be used to investigate the binding properties when metals associate with lantibiotics as well as binding of the metal-lantibiotic complex to target bacteria. This analysis will provide a comprehensive understanding of lantibiotic structure, diversity and modes of action, thus providing an invaluable tool to pharmaceutical, medical and agricultural industries.