Repurposing artificial sweeteners as infection and contamination control agents

Artificial sweeteners are a group of compounds that have a significantly higher sweetening power than sucrose but have little to no calorific contribution. Because of these properties, artificial sweeteners have become mainstays in the human diet with many companies offering "Zero" or "Sugar Free" alternatives to typically high sugar products. While there have been extensive studies investigating the impact of these sweeteners on the human body (Carocho et al., 2017), there have been relatively few studies looking at the impact of these compounds on the bacteria in the human body. However, these is emerging evidence that artificial sweeteners can significantly alter the gut and oral microbiome and that these changes can have an impact on human health (Suez et al., 2022). A recent study by the McCarthy lab has demonstrated that a number of these artificial sweeteners possess antimicrobial properties with the highly popular sweetener acesulfame K (ace-K) in particular, being able to inhibit bacterial movement, their ability to acquire antibiotic resistance genes from the environment and their ability to grow (De Dios et al., 2023). In this project we want to repurpose this sweetener as an infection and contamination control agent.