Osborne and Team Seeking a New Treatment for Autoimmune Diseases

Barbara Osborne (M2M), veterinary and animal sciences, and a small team of her colleagues involved in the startup medical research firm HasenTech recently were awarded two grants to advance their investigation of an exopolysaccharide (EPS), a sugar found on the surface of the bacterium Bacillis subilis. It can suppress an immune response and if translatable to use in humans, it holds promise of offering a new treatment for such conditions as irritable bowel disease (IBD) and other autoimmune diseases.

Osborne and colleagues have a one-year, $290,000 Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) from the National Institutes of Health plus $100,000 seed funding for up to 18 months from this year’s round of the Institute of Applied Life Sciences’ (IALS) Manning/IALS Innovation Awards. This also provides business training and mentorship from IALS, the College of Natural Sciences, the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship and the Isenberg School of Management to advance UMass Amherst-based translational and applied research and development to real-world use.

Osborne says, “Both grants will allow us to address the same question from different angles.” As she explains, humans are hosts for B. subtilis; it and its associated EPS are a natural part of our gut microbiome. People in Japan eat a fermented version of EPS called natto, she adds, which they believe to be beneficial.

Osborne’s long-time collaborator and friend, microbiologist and immune system researcher Katherine Knight at Loyola University, Chicago, discovered several years ago that mice induced to develop IBD are protected from the disease when treated with purified EPS.

Osborne recalls, “Katherine purified EPS and approached me with her results and asked whether we would test EPS in our mouse model of multiple sclerosis, a disease that is characterized by inflammation in the central nervous system. The mouse model, called experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, or EAE, is a very good model used by most MS researchers. Our preliminary data showed that EPS will suppress an autoimmune response in these mice and it did indeed save them from paralysis.”