Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** antibiotic resistance while…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** antibiotic resistance while talked about in humans, is rarely discussed with animals and is one of the greatest threats to human and animal health due to the overuse of antibiotics in livestock. Finding an alternative would keep our current antibiotics effective, reduce the amount of antibiotics excreted into farmland from livestock, as well as reduce the exposure to antibiotics for livestock and the people that eat food from livestock. Instead of antibiotics, probiotic microbes have shown promise as an alternative, but their use is limited because of challenges with their production and distribution. Unfortunately, the majority of commercially available probiotics are from a very limited list of microbial species usually the same 10-20 strains, that have been accepted due to their long history of safe use, attributed health benefits, and ease of manufacturing. There are over 1000's of other beneficial strains waiting to be commercialized. Unfortunately, across all industries one of the major problems in commercializing microbes are technical difficulties in making the microbes at scale due to the harsh conditions not only in manufacturing, but also distributing the product across the world. One class of microbes, faecalibacterium, are of particular interest as an antibiotic alternative to reduce gastrointestinal (GUT) disorders in young calves. Unfortunately, these microbes are extremely sensitive to the oxygen in the air and cannot even survive being exposed to air for a few minutes. Seia BIO has developed a proprietary coating technology that protects microbes from harmful stressors such as oxygen. Since microbes come in all different shapes and sizes, seia BIO will leverage their technology to fit the right coating onto faecalibacterium and show through stability testing that the newly protected microbes can survive when exposed to air and other stressors. Seia BIO will use imaging techniques as well as cell counting assays to show how well the new coating helps to protect the microbes. Ultimately, the goal is to be able to show that with seia BIO's protective coating technology that we can make the beneficial bacteria, f. Prausnitzii in open air instead of only in an oxygen-free environment. This will help to expand the list probiotic microbes that can be used in livestock as alternatives to antibiotics to help reduce the overuse of antibiotics in livestock.