San Agustin’s new patent puts Iloilo science on the map

The University of San Agustin (USA) has secured its third patent, this time for an isolated Streptomyces strain and its antimicrobial compositions derived from marine sediment — the latest in a growing body of drug-discovery work coming out of a private Augustinian university in Iloilo City rather than a Metro Manila research institution.

The invention, titled Isolated Bacterial Strain of the Genus Streptomyces and Antimicrobial Compositions Therefrom, was granted under IPOPhl Patent No. 1/2021/050091 on December 19, 2025, with protection running until March 9, 2041.

What makes this more than a campus milestone is the model behind it.

The university has been running its research through what it describes as a deliberate sequence of Discovery, Protection, Translation, and Impact — meaning a scientific finding is not left to sit in journals.

It gets screened for application, protected through patents, and prepared for licensing or product development. That pipeline is already visible in USA’s earlier patent and commercialization work on kadios-derived antibacterial products.

The research was spearheaded by the Center for Chemical Biology and Biotechnology (C2B2) and the Center for Natural Drug Discovery and Development (CND3), two units that have become central to the university’s drug-discovery push in Western Visayas.

The team behind the latest patent includes Dr. Doralyn S. Dalisay, Dr. Jonel P. Saludes, Chuckcris P. Tenebro, Carmela Vannette B. Vicera, Jovito Ysulat Jr., and Dana Joanne Von L. Trono.

Their work sits within a broader stream of marine bioprospecting at USA, which has focused on antibiotic-producing Streptomyces isolated from Philippine marine sediments.

Published research tied to the same group shows sustained output on marine sediment-derived Streptomyces and antibiotic activity.

The university’s Innovation and Technology Support Office (ITSO) has been instrumental in moving the work from lab bench to legal protection and, increasingly, toward market. T

he Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) describes ITSO as its flagship program for helping universities and research centers protect and transfer innovation.

At USA, that support has gone beyond filings. IPOPHL noted that the university’s ITSO has helped bring products to market through industry partnerships, including work with Pharma GalenX Innovations Inc. — a concrete example of patent protection, licensing, and commercialization being stitched together rather than treated as separate tracks.

The health stakes add weight to why this line of research matters.

The World Health Organization says antimicrobial resistance is one of the world’s top public health and development threats, estimating that bacterial AMR was directly responsible for 1.27 million deaths in 2019 and contributed to 4.95 million deaths.

In the Philippines, the Department of Science and Technology’s Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (DOST-PCHRD) has backed USA projects on marine Streptomyces specifically to search for antibiotic and anticancer leads against multidrug-resistant pathogens and other hard-to-treat diseases.

The patent also lands in a region trying to build deeper research capacity outside the capital. IPOPHL said USA now maintains more than 3,000 specimens from marine sediments, while its Visayas-based nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) facility has helped speed up compound identification that once required sending samples to Manila.

Taken together, the third patent strengthens the university’s argument that locally sourced biodiversity, when responsibly studied and legally protected, can generate both scientific value and public benefit — and that the research infrastructure to do it does not have to be concentrated in one city.