Trends in Microbiome and Digital One Health

Abstract:

The human gut microbiome is widely believed to hold great therapeutic potential due to its integral relationship with our body systems. Historically, gut microbiota have been added in bulk from healthy to diseased individuals, e.g. treatment of Cdiff infections via faecal microbiota transplantation, or selected from culture collections based on screening of isolates for therapeutic activities. A third emerging approach is to identify therapeutic candidates using comparative analysis of large faecal metagenomic datasets of healthy and diseased cohorts. The presumption is that bacterial species depleted in diseased individuals relative to matched healthy controls play a role in preventing the disease state. We have applied this approach to identify ~20 bacterial candidates for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Following extensive in vitro and animal model screening, we have progressed one isolate, MAP315, into Phase 1 human clinical trials. I will discuss MAP315 and potential mechanisms of action for the treatment of IBD.