BLIS-producing probiotics targeting the oral cavity

Abstract

Consumers seeking health-promoting dietary supplements have long been conditioned to the regular ingestion of yoghurt as a convenient source of living beneficial microbes (viz. probiotics). Conventional probiotics have typically been bacteria of intestinal origin (especially lactobacilli and bifidobacteria) and their application has principally been to provide relief for maladies of the gastrointestinal tract. However, the realisation that much human illness can be linked either directly (dental caries, periodontal disease and candidosis) or indirectly (cardiovascular disease and perhaps even obesity) to the development of oral microbiota disequilibria has diverted much of the thrust of contemporary probiotic research towards the establishment and maintenance of a healthy oral microbiota. Step one was to determine whether conventional intestinal probiotics could influence the oral microbiota, but these (perhaps unsurprisingly) have no oral persistence and any oral cavity health benefits are transitory and largely attributable to immune stimulation. Enter, Streptococcus salivarius K12 – the world’s first purposely-selected oral probiotic, a bacterium derived from the oral microbiota of a healthy human and shown to colonise the oral cavity and to express a wide variety of anti-competitor molecules, termed BLIS (bacteriocin-like inhibitory substances) capable of targeting oral pathogens and also thought to have a role in the stabilisation of a healthy oral microbiota.