A probiotic for the lungs? Research investigates new approach to infections

But what if they could be used to prevent respiratory infections?

It's the very concept Launceston researcher Brianna Atto is investigating, who said this project could be the last piece of evidence needed to push the novel product into the next stage of development.

"There's a main bad guy when it comes to these [respiratory] infections, and that's called Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi)," Dr Atto said.

"It gains entry into your nose and sits there for a bit, and in certain people it'll migrate into the lungs or the ear where it causes infection.

"So the idea is to develop a probiotic - either a nasal spray or some other aerosol formulation. We get our healthy bacteria to colonise in the nose and hopefully, our good guy can knock him off."

She said the main part of the study looked at disrupting biofilms, or bacteria clusters.

"One of the reasons that these respiratory infections are so hard to treat, even if you give someone antibiotics, is because of the ability of this bad bug to form biofilms in the respiratory tract," Dr Atto said.

"It can be over 10 to 1000 times resistant to antibiotics, and plays a big role in a lot of its ability to cause infection and persist in the respiratory tract."

Dr Atto said so far the research team found their treatment can work in a cell-culture model to prevent infection.

"But really, if we want it to be clinically relevant to what it's doing in the body, we need to show that it has some sort of effect against biofilms," Dr Atto said.

"So for us, this is a really key step and once we have this, we have all the evidence we need to go into animal and human studies."