Aug 14, 2008 - Claremont, Calif. - In an academic partnership with Harvey Mudd College (HMC), BioSTAR West has been awarded competitive funding to develop a novel technology to fight life-threatening, drug-resistant hospital infections.

Microbiologists and chemists from BioSTAR West and students from HMC are collaborating to create new prevention and treatment techniques to minimize drug resistant organisms that kill large numbers of people, and to prevent their spread in hospitals.

Hospital-acquired infections caused by multi-drug-resistant bacteria have been reported with increasing frequency. Almost two million people acquire a serious infection while hospitalized; these infections result in nearly 100,000 deaths annually. These are deaths that are unrelated to the primary cause of hospitalization and whose numbers are increasing as the virulence of drug resistant bacteria strengthens. The majority of these infections are attributed to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a strain of bacteria that can spread extremely quickly, and results in serious complications, including “flesh-eating disease.” The annual cost of treating these infections is estimated at more than $4 billion.

The BioSTAR West/HMC team will be developing new biocompatible spray disinfectants that have been shown to kill multi-drug resistant bacteria on surfaces and prevent their transmission to others by providing a long-term disinfectant effect. These materials are derived from natural products and are “green,” that is, biodegradable, processed in aqueous solutions and derived from waste materials from the shrimp industry.

HMC students will have primarily responsibility for researching and developing the regulatory pathway for approval of these materials by the Environmental Protection Agency. In this partnership, students will learn the importance of both the need for innovative science to create new products to save lives and the requirements to adhere to government regulations in order to bring such a product to market.

This effort is a five-month phase I award funded by the U.S. government’s Small Business Technology Transfer program, a national program that partners industry with academia to solve problems for the national good. Potential phase II funding could be more than $1 million to implement a deployable, approved and innovative aerosol-based decontamination techniques to decrease the prevalence of hospital-acquired infections and save lives.

Col. Geoffrey Ling, senior program manager at Defense Advanced Projects Agency in Washington, D.C., notes, “This project will result in reduced infections and mortality in huge numbers of patients. We are very happy that this outstanding team has been selected to address this need.”

Robert Cave, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at HMC, stated, “This partnership with BioSTAR West gives students the opportunity to participate in a project that has the potential for tremendous impact on healthcare. I’m particularly pleased to expand their undergraduate experiences to an aspect of research and product development to which students have less exposure than many would like. By studying and understanding the pathways that companies must follow in order to bring a safe and effective product to market, HMC students will begin to understand the regulatory process that all chemicals much pass before being used in the environment.”

“Having learned about the challenges facing a hospitalized patient, we are eager to develop a critically needed method to prevent the spread of hospital infections,” added co-principle investigator Shenda Baker, HMC professor of chemistry and director of the Global Clinic Program. “The natural biopolymeric materials will provide the basis for a novel sustainable and biocompatible spray that can limit the spread of bacterial pathogens and prevent increasingly common multi-drug resistant infections. I’m particularly excited because these polymers do not appear to induce resistance in Gram positive bacterial such as MRSA.”

During the course of this funding period, researchers will investigate different formulations and delivery methods, in order to determine the optimal doses to kill increasingly drug-resistant bacteria that needlessly take the lives of patients.