A woman suffers from a debilitating headache during a hangover.
Probiotics seem to be everywhere these days. They are marketed for numerous health issues, from irritable bowel syndrome and vaginal yeast infections to life-threatening disorders like the bacterial infection Clostridium difficile.
The new probiotic drink is made of genetically engineered bacteria meant to help people feel better the day after drinking.
While the probiotic gummies that you'll find in supermarkets may not do much for you, good clinical evidence does support the C. difficile treatment, known as a fecal transplant, despite a recent setback, and there are always new probiotic regimens entering the scene. One emerging such treatment targets the hangover.
The Lowdown
You read that right – although "hangover" is a loaded term, according to ZBiotics, the company that's developing the product. The popular understanding of a hangover implies a collection of symptoms like a headache and fatigue, many of which result simply from dehydration and low-quality sleep. But those aren't the problems that the new product, a genetically engineered form of a common bacterial species, was developed to confront.
"Dehydration and poor sleep have actually always been pretty simple to deal with by having a good breakfast and some caffeine," notes ZBiotics founder and microbiologist Zack Abbott. Instead, the product targets acetaldehyde, a chemical that accumulates in the body if more than small amounts of alcohol are consumed.
Normally, body cells produce an enzyme that converts acetaldehyde into harmless acetic acid. But the enzyme becomes overwhelmed if you drink more than a little alcohol, or if you have a certain genetic deficiency.
A new probiotic drink aims to neutralize a chemical that builds up in the body after drinking alcohol.
(Zbiotics)
"I started ZBiotics with the hypothesis that if we used edible probiotic bacteria to make enzymes, and chose applications in which the enzymes these microbes make would be useful directly in the gut after you eat them, we could create all sorts of beneficial products," says Abbott. "I started with alcohol with the idea that we can augment the body's natural ability to digest its nasty byproduct, acetaldehyde, helping people feel better the day after drinking."
Next Steps
Based on the premise that the engineered bacteria augments a natural body function, ZBiotics had the product "sampled by thousands of beta-testers," including ZBiotics personnel, with "almost unanimously positive feedback," says Abbott.
"We are working on future scientifically controlled testing for publication."
ZBiotics is to set to launch on the market next week as a probiotic supplement, a category that does not require FDA approval. But some observers are troubled over whether the new product is attempting to serve a medical function without going through the standard drug testing process.
"I am skeptical of any new alternative product that is not FDA approved, has not undergone rigorous double-blind placebo control testing and adverse effects evaluation, and cites anecdotes as evidence of its efficacy," warns Heather Berlin, a cognitive neuroscientist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York.
Abbott acknowledges that his product still needs to undergo rigorous study. "We are working on future scientifically controlled testing for publication," he says, noting that the company was "founded and [is] run by people with backgrounds in academic research."
Open Questions
Moving beyond the need for proper testing, Berlin has an additional concern: will a "hangover"-blocking substance cause people to drink more alcohol, or mask important physiological sensations like thirst?
"If that negative feeling is obscured, they may not [rehydrate], which can cause numerous adverse effects," Berlin says.
As for excessive drinking, there is a treatment on the market that does the opposite of Zbiotics. Disulfiram, commonly given to alcohol abusers, inhibits the very enzyme that ZBiotics supplements, causing acetaldehyde to accumulate especially fast. This makes drinking a pretty miserable experience.
But Abbott says his product would not interfere with disulfiram.
"[Zbiotics] is about enjoying the special moments in life where alcohol happens to be involved, but isn't the main focus."
"Disulfiram globally inhibits the enzyme throughout the entire body, including the liver, creating a massive amount of acetaldehyde at once, making the person ill immediately and forcing them to stop drinking right away," Abbott explains, whereas his product exerts its effects in the gut, and is really only helpful the next day. Thus, timing is everything; the probiotic would not change the experience at the moment of drinking.
"ZBiotics isn't about going out and ripping shots all night," Abbott says. "It's about enjoying the special moments in life where alcohol happens to be involved, but isn't the main focus. Weddings, celebrations, weekends with friends. And wanting to do that enjoyably while being safe and responsible at the same time."
In a recent research trial, patients with Parkinson's disease reported that their symptoms had improved after stem cells were implanted into their brains. Martin Taylor, far right, was diagnosed at age 32.
For years, there's been little improvement in the standard treatment. Patients are typically given the drug levodopa, a chemical that's absorbed by the brain’s nerve cells, or neurons, and converted into dopamine. This drug addresses the symptoms but has no impact on the course of the disease as patients continue to lose dopamine producing neurons. Eventually, the treatment stops working effectively.
BlueRock Therapeutics, a cell therapy company based in Massachusetts, is taking a different approach by focusing on the use of stem cells, which can divide into and generate new specialized cells. The company makes the dopamine-producing cells that patients have lost and inserts these cells into patients' brains. “We have a disease with a high unmet need,” says Ahmed Enayetallah, the senior vice president and head of development at BlueRock. “We know [which] cells…are lost to the disease, and we can make them. So it really came together to use stem cells in Parkinson's.”
In a phase 1 research trial announced late last month, patients reported that their symptoms had improved after a year of treatment. Brain scans also showed an increased number of neurons generating dopamine in patients’ brains.
Increases in dopamine signals
The recent phase 1 trial focused on deploying BlueRock’s cell therapy, called bemdaneprocel, to treat 12 patients suffering from Parkinson’s. The team developed the new nerve cells and implanted them into specific locations on each side of the patient's brain through two small holes in the skull made by a neurosurgeon. “We implant cells into the places in the brain where we think they have the potential to reform the neural networks that are lost to Parkinson's disease,” Enayetallah says. The goal is to restore motor function to patients over the long-term.
Five patients were given a relatively low dose of cells while seven got higher doses. Specialized brain scans showed evidence that the transplanted cells had survived, increasing the overall number of dopamine producing cells. The team compared the baseline number of these cells before surgery to the levels one year later. “The scans tell us there is evidence of increased dopamine signals in the part of the brain affected by Parkinson's,” Enayetallah says. “Normally you’d expect the signal to go down in untreated Parkinson’s patients.”
"I think it has a real chance to reverse motor symptoms, essentially replacing a missing part," says Tilo Kunath, a professor of regenerative neurobiology at the University of Edinburgh.
The team also asked patients to use a specific type of home diary to log the times when symptoms were well controlled and when they prevented normal activity. After a year of treatment, patients taking the higher dose reported symptoms were under control for an average of 2.16 hours per day above their baselines. At the smaller dose, these improvements were significantly lower, 0.72 hours per day. The higher-dose patients reported a corresponding decrease in the amount of time when symptoms were uncontrolled, by an average of 1.91 hours, compared to 0.75 hours for the lower dose. The trial was safe, and patients tolerated the year of immunosuppression needed to make sure their bodies could handle the foreign cells.
Claire Bale, the associate director of research at Parkinson's U.K., sees the promise of BlueRock's approach, while noting the need for more research on a possible placebo effect. The trial participants knew they were getting the active treatment, and placebo effects are known to be a potential factor in Parkinson’s research. Even so, “The results indicate that this therapy produces improvements in symptoms for Parkinson's, which is very encouraging,” Bale says.
Tilo Kunath, a professor of regenerative neurobiology at the University of Edinburgh, also finds the results intriguing. “I think it's excellent,” he says. “I think it has a real chance to reverse motor symptoms, essentially replacing a missing part.” However, it could take time for this therapy to become widely available, Kunath says, and patients in the late stages of the disease may not benefit as much. “Data from cell transplantation with fetal tissue in the 1980s and 90s show that cells did not survive well and release dopamine in these [late-stage] patients.”
Searching for the right approach
There's a long history of using cell therapy as a treatment for Parkinson's. About four decades ago, scientists at the University of Lund in Sweden developed a method in which they transferred parts of fetal brain tissue to patients with Parkinson's so that their nerve cells would produce dopamine. Many benefited, and some were able to stop their medication. However, the use of fetal tissue was highly controversial at that time, and the tissues were difficult to obtain. Later trials in the U.S. showed that people benefited only if a significant amount of the tissue was used, and several patients experienced side effects. Eventually, the work lost momentum.
“Like many in the community, I'm aware of the long history of cell therapy,” says Taylor, the patient living with Parkinson's. “They've long had that cure over the horizon.”
In 2000, Lorenz Studer led a team at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Centre, in New York, to find the chemical signals needed to get stem cells to differentiate into cells that release dopamine. Back then, the team managed to make cells that produced some dopamine, but they led to only limited improvements in animals. About a decade later, in 2011, Studer and his team found the specific signals needed to guide embryonic cells to become the right kind of dopamine producing cells. Their experiments in mice, rats and monkeys showed that their implanted cells had a significant impact, restoring lost movement.
Studer then co-founded BlueRock Therapeutics in 2016. Forming the most effective stem cells has been one of the biggest challenges, says Enayetallah, the BlueRock VP. “It's taken a lot of effort and investment to manufacture and make the cells at the right scale under the right conditions.” The team is now using cells that were first isolated in 1998 at the University of Wisconsin, a major advantage because they’re available in a virtually unlimited supply.
Other efforts underway
In the past several years, University of Lund researchers have begun to collaborate with the University of Cambridge on a project to use embryonic stem cells, similar to BlueRock’s approach. They began clinical trials this year.
A company in Japan called Sumitomo is using a different strategy; instead of stem cells from embryos, they’re reprogramming adults' blood or skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells - meaning they can turn into any cell type - and then directing them into dopamine producing neurons. Although Sumitomo started clinical trials earlier than BlueRock, they haven’t yet revealed any results.
“It's a rapidly evolving field,” says Emma Lane, a pharmacologist at the University of Cardiff who researches clinical interventions for Parkinson’s. “But BlueRock’s trial is the first full phase 1 trial to report such positive findings with stem cell based therapies.” The company’s upcoming phase 2 research will be critical to show how effectively the therapy can improve disease symptoms, she added.
The cure over the horizon
BlueRock will continue to look at data from patients in the phase 1 trial to monitor the treatment’s effects over a two-year period. Meanwhile, the team is planning the phase 2 trial with more participants, including a placebo group.
For patients with Parkinson’s like Martin Taylor, the therapy offers some hope, though Taylor recognizes that more research is needed.
BlueRock Therapeutics
“Like many in the community, I'm aware of the long history of cell therapy,” he says. “They've long had that cure over the horizon.” His expectations are somewhat guarded, he says, but, “it's certainly positive to see…movement in the field again.”
"If we can demonstrate what we’re seeing today in a more robust study, that would be great,” Enayetallah says. “At the end of the day, we want to address that unmet need in a field that's been waiting for a long time.”
Editor's note: The company featured in this piece, BlueRock Therapeutics, is a portfolio company of Leaps by Bayer, which is a sponsor of Leaps.org. BlueRock was acquired by Bayer Pharmaceuticals in 2019. Leaps by Bayer and other sponsors have never exerted influence over Leaps.org content or contributors.