The history of Vetom probiotics

The research into bacteria and the first "live" preparations based on this research date back to the 1930s.

In 1939, the Wehrmacht armies encountered the problem of dysentery in Africa. The disease affected both armies. The Arabs were the first to solve the problem. They used camel dung as an effective remedy. The Germans were unwilling to consume camel dung, but they realized what made this remedy so effective. The active ingredient was found to be the microorganism,  Bacillus subtilis which is capable of suppressing the development and reproduction of the causative agents of dysentery. Based on this bacterium, German scientists created a probiotic preparation, which was subsequently widely used in the army to prevent dysentery. After the defeat of Hitler's Germany, the technology for producing probiotics was acquired by the Americans.

However, the Soviet Union did not remain idle in response to this event.

After World War II, considerable resources were mobilized to develop defenses against modern weapons, including biological weapons. In 1974, a huge secret organization called Mikrobioprom was founded with the aim of developing preparations for the defense of people against biogenic disasters, including biological weapons. The Mikrobioprom system included existing scientific institutes, newly established specialized scientific microbiology centers, and factories producing biological preparations. The leading institution of Mikrobioprom was the Vektor company, which operated in the village of Koltsovo near Novosibirsk. The size of this institution is still impressive today. In parallel with the Vektor institution, five other institutions were built and developed. As a result, the Soviet Union took the leading position in the field of microbiology on a global scale in a relatively short period of time.

Namely, in the early 1990s, Vektor successfully created the first artificial living object in human history—a plasmid that produces human leukocyte interferon-alpha-2, a fundamental protein of the immune system, which was successfully incorporated into the DNA of human cells. a "plasmid" , which produces human leukocyte interferon-alpha-2, a fundamental protein of the immune system, and successfully incorporated it into the cell of the  Bacillus subtilis microbe. As a result, a recombinant variant appeared that is capable of producing about 70 antibiotics, as well as a wide range of enzymes and interferons. In the form of spores, this strain passes through stomach acid and duodenal alkali without damage and is activated in the large intestine.

This probiotic preparation, based on the aforementioned probiotic, was named "Subalin." And everyone knows what happened next. The Soviet Union did something wrong, market reforms began, and Mikrobioprom was no longer needed by the authorities. However, Vektor was needed by US government agencies. For three years, foreign experts studied, inspected, and collected data at Vektor. Of course, Subalin was unable to break into the market. The fact that at least some of Vektor's research was not lost is largely thanks to its founder, Lev Stepanovich Sanakhachev, one of the creators of Subalin. Sankhachiev created several private companies from separate units of Vektor, which learned to survive outside the private sector. Roughly half of them succeeded.

These include the Central Scientific Research Center, which has registered more than 50 inventions in the fields of microbiology and genetics, among others, by microbiologist and geneticist Alexander Ivanovich Lelyak.

In fact, this company was tasked with researching live preparations, studying them further, and organizing their creation. Over the past 20 years, the Research Center, which currently employs more than 200 specialists, has developed ways to adapt to current market conditions.

Microbes account for 90 percent of our planet's biomass, explains Alexander Ivanovich Leljak. We can safely say that the world we live in actually belongs to them. Most microorganisms are human, animal, and plant infections. We ourselves are made up of 2-3 percent microbes. If we examine any part of our body, we can see that certain microorganisms exist there—every part of the body has its own microbial ecosystem. These help the body defend itself against harmful environmental influences. If we violate this, we become ill. However, in an optimal situation, when all our own microbes remain with us, we are able to protect ourselves from all infections!