At the ForeFront:
Biofilm busters
Calgary-based biotech firm Innovotech is developing new ways to screen and treat biofilms, the culprits behind 60% of human bacterial infections.
Welcome to slime city—home to most of the world's bacteria. Although we tend to think of bacteria as free-floating single cells, most of them live together in large numbers, attached to a surface and surrounded by the slime they secrete.
The real name for these bacterial communities is biofilms. They're everywhere—in the slime on river stones, in the plaque on teeth, in the coatings inside water pipes. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as 60% of human bacterial infections in the Western world are caused by biofilms. These include infections of the urinary tract and the middle ear; infections that develop around catheters and devices such as joint prostheses and heart valves; as well as infections caused by a wide range of conditions, from cystic fibrosis to gum disease.
Biofilms are big problems because they're very hard to kill. Current antibiotics are designed to fight free-floating bacteria, which are relatively easy to kill. When those same bacteria form a biofilm, their resistance to antibiotics can become as much as 4,000 times stronger. Now Innovotech, a small Alberta biotech company, is leading the way in the screening and testing of biofilms—the first important steps in effectively treating the infections associated with them.
Innovotech's technology has its origins in biofilm research led by Dr. Merle Olson and Dr. Howard Ceri at the University of Calgary. Their group invented and patented a specialized testing system for biofilms, and created a company called MBEC BioProducts to market it. The MBEC Assay is a screening system for growing and experimenting on biofilms. It is designed to determine whether a drug that is effective against free-floating bacteria can eradicate the same organisms in a biofilm.
MBEC amalgamated with Innovotech in 2006, and the company is going full throttle developing products that address biofilm problems in a range of industries. Innovotech's newest product is the bioFILM PA antimicrobial sensitivity kit, which quickly identifies the combination of antibiotics that will kill biofilms formed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria. No other test can do this. These biofilms often develop in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients, where they may cause pneumonias which are potentially lethal.
"As bacteria become more resistant to antibiotics, the use of combinations of antibiotics is increasing," says Innovotech president Ken Boutilier. "Our technology allows clinicians to make better use of currently available drugs by providing a much clearer picture of the effectiveness of antibiotic combinations against a specific patient's biofilm infection. This should result in better patient outcomes and reduced healthcare costs."
The company received Phase 2 funding from AHFMR's ForeFront Innovation Program to advance the development of this product. The ForeFront program funds medical technologies that demonstrate potential to improve health care and achieve commercial success.
And there's another AHFMR connection to Innovotech: one of the Innovotech staff who worked on bioFILM PA is Dr. Bhavin Rawal, an AHFMR ForeFront Intern. The ForeFront Internship Program provides opportunities for university graduates to learn the business aspects of the health industry through a combination of training courses and on-the-job experience. The program addresses the need for highly trained managers in Alberta-based health and medical-products companies.
Dr. Rawal is now leading the commercialization of bioFILM PA. The product has already received Health Canada approval, and Innovotech is conducting the quality-testing that will certify the test kit for use in hospitals.
"There's a lot left to do in biofilms: we have plans for test kits for both staphylococcus and fungal biofilm infections," notes Boutilier. "In the next few years, we hope to bring an agricultural product to market to address a biofilm problem in agriculture that is of the same magnitude as the biofilm problem in human health. We may be a small company, but we've got big plans."