RADOV

RADOV is a four-year research project aiming to develop a method for the commercial production of antimicrobial peptides. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) kills 700,000 people each year world wide and experts predict this number will reach 10 million by 2050 if significant effort is not made to reverse this trend. The situation is getting worse with the emergence of new bacterial strains that are resistant to several antibiotics and which may eventually become resistant to all existing antibiotics. AMPs are prospective alternative antimicrobial agents for the future. These are small proteins present in different life forms in nature or that result from enzymatic digestion of proteins that provide a defence against microbial infections. However, only very few have been commercialised so far. RADOV will use beams of electrons to synthesise the AMPs from egg proteins, preferably from an abundant waste stream of the egg industry, such as the eggshell membrane.