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Attana’s customer Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas, CSIC has in a collaboration developed methods to identify differences between bacteria and their mutations.

This specific detection allows the development of next generation antibiotics that can target one type of bacteria but does not affect others.

Next generation antibiotics aim to make patient treatment more effective while lowering the risk of resistant bacteria. Attana’s QCM technology has been applied to determine the kinetic interaction of the molecules that interact specifically with a given bacteria, demonstrating the value of Attana’s technology in the development of next generation antibiotics.

The article presents experimental data of Prof Solis team of researchers that shows the complexity of carbohydrates on the bacterial surface. These carbohydrates make it difficult to develop antibodies that are specific for a certain kind of bacteria. However, if the exact structure of the carbohydrates is known, the development of specific molecules is possible. In this article lipooligosaccharides, a hybrid form of fat- and sugar molecules were used to achieve this specificity. The presented results additionally indicate that even other carbohydrate structures might be available for targeting in the future, for example lectins. For Attana this article implies the great potential of our technology for the understanding of the complexity of bacterial surfaces, which directly contributes to the development of next generation antibiotics.