Research & Development

By exploiting amoeba Willaertia magna C2c Maky’s characteristics, Amoéba develops different applications.

Isolated from the environment, this amoeba has natural features. Indeed, the amoeba’s lifecycle involves feeding by absorbing and digesting other microorganisms.

They are natural regulators of environmental bacterial populations.

Amoéba has used this characteristic to develop a biological biocide to prevent the multiplication of legionella in industrial cooling towers.

The regulatory file to obtain marketing authorization for this product is currently under review.

Further research is currently being conducted in order to best exploit this feature.

Thus, the conduct of studies concerning the effectiveness of Willaertia magna C2c Maky on biofilm thickness reduction are part of our 2021 objectives.

Another area of research concerns health, in particular the possibility of treating wounds to eliminate antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Amoeba showed that the components of the dead amoeba could have an activity of their own, independent of the amoeba’s biology.

Indeed, amoeba lysate, whether in liquid or dry form, is capable of preventing the germination of certain spores of microscopic fungi and in particular phytopathogenic fungi.

Amoeba is using this characteristic to develop a biocontrol product to combat fungal plant diseases.

Among the possible spectrum of action, Amoéba targets more particularly mildew (vine, potato) and cereal rust. Future objectives will be to test other pathogens and plants.

This feature opens up a field of multiple applications, particularly at the interface between fields of health and the environment.

A thesis that has begun in 2021 aims to generate data to better understand and preserve the health of ecosystems (human and environment). Indeed, with the use of chemical treatments being more and more controversial, the discovery of biological alternatives would be part of an ecological approach. The search for antimicrobial compounds produced by our amoeba could thus respond to some of the challenges our society is facing.

While much knowledge about amoebae and their interactions has been contributed to traditional microbiology, little data exists in the fields of molecular biology, genetics or “omics” (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, etc.) for these microorganisms. The contribution of new knowledge on amoebas, such as the ones generated in the thesis defended in 2020, would allow a better understanding of the complex links that govern amoeba-microorganism interactions.

The identification and characterization of metabolites produced by amoebas will provide new leads of reflection for future applications.