The same entities that helped create antibiotics are advancing alternative proteins

The food innovation happening in Peoria, Illinois can help us combat antimicrobial resistance

There’s no doubt that we all have a lot on our minds these days, especially regarding public health and policymaking. There are certainly two words that keep me up at night: antimicrobial resistance.

Antimicrobial resistance is quickly becoming one of the greatest threats to our public health. Bacteria are increasingly resisting the antibiotics that we use, and it could spell the end of medicine as we know it today.

To offer a solution, it is helpful to think about how we got here—a story built on biotechnology, public research, American agriculture, and the food that we eat.

Developing antibiotics

I learned in elementary school that Sir Alexander Fleming famously discovered penicillin in 1930s England. What I didn’t learn was that the research took several years to translate into development and widescale production.

Governments, in particular, were hesitant to invest in such a nascent industry—partly because of the threat of war in Europe and difficult economic times. It was also difficult for researchers to collaborate with medical and agricultural experts around the world, as it would take significant time and resources just to send samples to one another.

Early innovators faced steep challenges—not just a lack of investment and enthusiasm, but sky-high production costs. Like many early-stage technologies, the road to progress was rocky: researchers grappled with unpredictable targets of penicillin and difficulty maintaining ideal production conditions. Leaders and decision-makers at the time seemed to have little interest in penicillin production. But as the threat of World War II loomed, priorities began to shift, bringing renewed focus to medical innovation.

Even with this additional support, researchers were still struggling with challenges that are familiar to any emerging industry—how to scale up and ensure consistent, reliable results at larger volumes. These barriers inspired international crosscutting collaboration, and the Rockefeller Foundation helped facilitate collaboration between English researchers and American experts.

Enter: the United States Department of Agriculture and the biotechnology sector

For penicillin to become a viable commercial solution, researchers needed to achieve key scientific breakthroughs that would enable large-scale production—and do so in a way that allowed the leading pharmaceutical companies to join the effort.

As researchers visited sites around the world that could scale production, all signs soon pointed to the American Heartland. The Northern Research Laboratory in Peoria, Illinois, was uniquely equipped to make this innovation happen. As a central hub of research for the United States Department of Agriculture, the lab was already leading efforts to discover new industrial applications for America’s crops and agricultural products. Located in the corn capital of the world, the lab was advancing fermentation research—including corn-steep liquor, which is a byproduct of wet-milling corn to produce corn starch.

As researchers at the Peoria lab increased their focus on penicillin, they leveraged local corn liquor production to provide the fermentation capacity needed for large-scale manufacturing of this groundbreaking drug.

That lab’s upcycled corn liquor would become the basis of the culture for penicillin production. Employing a process called submerged deep-tank fermentation, the researchers were essentially able to brew penicillin and supercharge production. According to Northern Illinois University researchers, this new technological method “increased penicillin production by ten times, making possible the commercial production of the much-needed drug.” At the Peoria lab, the production successfully scaled in preparation for the invasion of Europe—also driving down the price from $20 per dose to $0.55 per dose in just two years.

The Agriculture Research Service has repeatedly noted the importance of public-private partnerships in a landmark moment:

“Production methods and samples of the new strain were transferred both to other research groups and private industry, and clinical trials were performed in 1943. When the trials showed that penicillin was the most effective antibacterial agent to date, penicillin production quickly was scaled up and the antibiotic was made available in quantity to treat Allied soldiers wounded on D-Day.”

These innovations changed the world as we know it. The story of penicillin’s development is not just a triumph of American scientific excellence—it’s also a testament to the vital role of American agriculture and the innovation of the American heartland.

With this development, Peoria is thought to be the birthplace of antibiotics. Even more than that, this breakthrough planted the seeds for the eventual emergence of biotechnology.

A new challenge: antimicrobial resistance

Fast forward a few decades and now the world must tackle a new threat—antimicrobial resistance.

President Trump recently appointed Dr. Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration over the next four years. Throughout his career as a surgeon and medical professor, Dr. Makary has sounded the alarm on antimicrobial resistance time and time again. As antibiotics are continually used—and overused—bacteria become increasingly resistant, rendering many of these medicines ineffective. In a post-antibiotic world, infections that were treatable for decades can once again become life-threatening. In 2019 alone, up to 1.27 million people died due to antimicrobial resistance.

Specifically, Dr. Makary has dedicated significant attention to the role agriculture plays in antimicrobial resistance. He estimates that approximately 20 percent of antibiotic-resistant infections can be traced back to antibiotic overuse on farms and ranches. As he explains, these antibiotics are ubiquitous in our current food system:

“70-80 percent of all of the antibiotics produced are used in animals. Why? For no good reason. It’s so the animals can be crowded [in] factory farming. Is this where you want to get your meat from? Is this the type of farming you want to support with your dollars? We can do better.”

Medical leaders across the world share Dr. Makary’s concerns about the threat of antimicrobial resistance. In fact, a review by the U.K. government found that antimicrobial resistance is a more certain risk to humanity than climate change.

As Dr. Makary takes leadership of the FDA, he is well-positioned to bring along his laser focus on antimicrobial resistance:

“We doctors did a very good job trying to educate the public about smoking. We took this on as a profession should take on the cause of not using antibiotics routinely in agriculture.”

But the story doesn’t stop there. Innovators around the country are once again using science to solve the big issues of our time—ones that will hopefully lead to similar advances in the private sector. And ones that will prevent the worst effects of antimicrobial resistance.

Biotechnology, food, and America’s heartland

USDA researchers in Peoria, Illinois—at the very same lab where penicillin was developed—are once again conducting groundbreaking biotech research and development: this time to produce foods and proteins that do not require any antibiotics at all.

For the last several years, the Agricultural Research Service has been researching food biomanufacturing to turn the crops that we grow in America into high-protein foods and ingredients. While this work is happening from Louisiana to Michigan to Washington, Peoria is emerging as a particularly exciting hub of progress. In fact, many of the scientific techniques used to develop penicillin are being used now to produce proteins, including fermentation, cellular agriculture, and corn-based feedstocks.

These researchers are looking for real-world solutions to problems facing Americans right now: dwindling markets for farmers, antimicrobial resistance, supply chain disruptions, and international competition. And the best part is—they are using American crops and the same techniques that put Peoria on the map to make it a reality.

According to the journal Nature Food, “eliminating antibiotic overuse in food production could help mitigate the growing risk of AMR” and “strategies for producing meat without antibiotics will be essential to meet the growing demand for protein.” Food biomanufacturing is one tool for meeting that skyrocketing protein demand without the overuse of antibiotics.

Simply put, we can use crops and feedstocks to create high-protein products without using antibiotics. A variety of row crops grown by U.S. farmers (e.g., soy, wheat, peas, beans) serve as essential ingredients for countless alternative protein products. Not only are crops like corn and soy abundant in the heartland, but they do not require antibiotics to grow. That means no risk of contributing to antibiotic resistance.

Even cultivated meat is very likely to be “antibiotic-free” according to experts. Currently, all the cultivated meat products on the market around the world don’t use antibiotics in commercial production. Moving forward, cultivated meat companies will have strong incentives to keep their products antibiotic-free for both business and public health reasons.

Looking forward

This new generation of researchers is looking for real-world solutions to problems facing Americans right now: antimicrobial resistance, dwindling markets for farmers, supply chain disruptions, and international competition.

In the years ahead, it’s essential for this ecosystem to come together—just as it did in the decades following the discovery of penicillin. Like before, success will depend on cutting-edge R&D, strong public-private partnerships, scale-up efforts, market-shaping strategies, and bold innovation.

If history is any guide, I’m confident that researchers in Peoria, Illinois—and innovators across the alternative protein sector—will play a huge role in making it happen.

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