We are happy to share that our follow-up paper on our antibiotic-free fermentation technology has been published in Frontiers in Industrial Microbiology.

Frontiers | Inducible complementation for antibiotic-free plasmid-based biomanufacturing in industrially relevant strains

In this study, we characterized antibiotic-free plasmid maintenance in a variety of E. coli strains and show the highly robust nature of this strategy. Here are some highlights:

• No plasmid loss in any strains tested (B, K12, Nissle-1917, E. coli W) in non-supplemented media
• Improved plasmid maintenance of a pET expression vector in different T7-harbouring strains, showing improved selection under challenging conditions
• Successful commercial scale-up to 10,000 L

In particular, the head-to-head comparison of an industrial fermentation performed with antibiotics (“classical”) versus with our strategy (“antibiotic-free”) demonstrates the industrial applicability of our technology.

This addresses a key challenge in white biotechnology and allows manufacturers to eliminate the use of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes in fermentations. Eliminating antibiotic use in manufacturing helps prevent the development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and is an important step to safeguard antibiotic efficacy for medicine.