A July 2021 study by the DNRF Centre of Excellence, Copenhagen Center for Glycomics said
“We have developed a method for producing the important information found in human mucus, also called mucins, with their important sugars. Now, we show that it is possible to artificially produce it in the same way as we produce other therapeutic biologics today, such as antibodies and other biological medicine.”
“It is the body's way of selecting the good bacteria and deselecting those that cause diseases. And it is precisely the sugars in the mucus that we are now able to design as needed”
“We have found a small molecule from bacteria - which we call X409 - that binds to the intestine, and that is precisely one of the many possibilities we are now working on”
“An incredible number of diseases have a connection to the intestinal flora, but we still know very little about how we can control the intestinal flora in the treatment of diseases. This is where synthetic mucins could open up new treatment options”
“Ultimately, one can imagine using mucins as a pre-biotic material, that is, as molecules that help the good bacteria in the body””
“We imagine that instead of using antibiotics, you might produce for example eye drops with the mucin that normally removes the bacteria in the treatment of eye infections. In concrete terms, this means that mucin can dissolve the so-called biofilm of bacteria, which is often pathogenic"
“We also show that mucins are very important for the way in which the common flu virus infects our mucous membranes in competition with mucins which inhibit the infection and flush out the virus”