Superbugs Be Gone

By Adam Farley, Deputy Editor
August / September 2017

Dublin Institute of Technology start-up company Kastus was the recent recipient of a Knowledge Transfer Ireland award, which promotes publicly-funded research in Ireland, for their new antimicrobial solution designed to kill so-called “superbugs” like MRSA, Ecoli, fungus associated with athlete’s foot, and carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae.

Kastus CEO John Browne says their solution will kill what the World Health Organization calls the “Dirty Dozen,” twelve superbugs listed as highest priority, including critical bugs like acineto- bacter, pseudomonas, and various enterobacteriaceae.

­According to Marie O’Halloran, a health reporter for the Irish Times, “These can cause bloodstream infections and pneumonia and pose a major risk in hospitals and nursing homes. The W.H.O. list also includes high- and medium-priority drug-resistant bacteria that cause diseases such as gonorrhea and food poisoning caused by salmonella.”

The solution is “factory applied,” according to Brown, mixed in with raw materials during the manufacturing process, allowing the solution to infuse just about any product imaginable, from smartphones to door knobs, ATMs to ceramics. Buoyed by patent success in America and the U.K., Kastus has fifteen other global patents pending for their solution. ♦

Leave a Reply