A naturally occurring clay shows promise as an antibiotic

About three years ago, University of British Columbia (UBC) microbiologist Julian Davies hosted an unusual meeting in his lab in Vancouver, Canada. The visitors explained that they had recently acquired the rights to a clay deposit 250 miles north, on the edge of the Kisameet Basin, which is within territory belonging to a group of native, or First Nations, people, the Heiltsuk. The owners of the deposit planned to use the clay to create and sell cosmetics through their company, Kisameet Glacial Clay Inc., they said. They also speculated, based on scientific and medical reports about the clay published in the 1940s and ’50s, that the clay had antimicrobial properties, and wondered if Davies would be willing to look into it. “This sounds like quackery, a little bit,” Davies remembers thinking.

But the visitors, including the company president, Lawry Lund, told Davies that the Heiltsuk people had used the clay for healing purposes for many years and that doctors and scientists had published reports of its effectiveness for diverse medical applications in the 1950s. Davies’s interest was piqued. With funding primarily from the company, he and his team began testing the clay as an antibiotic against various bacteria. “It’s been almost all surprises since then,” he says. Solutions of the clay can kill 16 different strains of multidrug-resistant bacteria that commonly infect hospital patients. Read more here or read the scientific article.