Microbiome therapeutics - Advances and challenges.

Adv Drug Deliv Rev

MIT Microbiology Program, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA; MIT Synthetic Biology Center, 500 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA, USA; Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; The Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics, Cambridge, MA, USA. Electronic address:

Published: October 2016

AI Article Synopsis

  • The microbial community in the human body significantly affects health, influencing aspects like metabolism and immunity.
  • Researchers are focusing on new therapeutics that target the microbiota through strategies like engineering bacteria for therapies and using selective antimicrobials.
  • The development of these microbiome therapies faces challenges such as ensuring they are localized, stable, and safe, highlighting the need for collaboration among researchers and clinicians to advance this field.

Article Abstract

The microbial community that lives on and in the human body exerts a major impact on human health, from metabolism to immunity. In order to leverage the close associations between microbes and their host, development of therapeutics targeting the microbiota has surged in recent years. Here, we discuss current additive and subtractive strategies to manipulate the microbiota, focusing on bacteria engineered to produce therapeutic payloads, consortia of natural organisms and selective antimicrobials. Further, we present challenges faced by the community in the development of microbiome therapeutics, including designing microbial therapies that are adapted for specific geographies in the body, stable colonization with microbial therapies, discovery of clinically relevant biosensors, robustness of engineered synthetic gene circuits and addressing safety and biocontainment concerns. Moving forward, collaboration between basic and applied researchers and clinicians to address these challenges will poise the field to herald an age of next-generation, cellular therapies that draw on novel findings in basic research to inform directed augmentation of the human microbiota.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5093770PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.addr.2016.04.032DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

microbiome therapeutics
8
microbial therapies
8
therapeutics advances
4
advances challenges
4
challenges microbial
4
microbial community
4
community lives
4
lives human
4
human body
4
body exerts
4

Similar Publications

Treatment with antibiotics is a major risk factor for infection, likely due to depletion of the gastrointestinal microbiota. Two microbiota-mediated mechanisms thought to limit colonization include the conversion of conjugated primary bile salts into secondary bile salts toxic to growth and competition between the microbiota and for limiting nutrients. Using a continuous flow model that simulates the nutrient conditions of the distal colon, we investigated how treatment with 6 clinically used antibiotics influenced susceptibility to infection in 12 different microbial communities cultivated from healthy individuals.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: The concept of genome-microbiome interactions, in which the microenvironment determined by host genetic polymorphisms regulates the local microbiota, is important in the pathogenesis of human disease. In otolaryngology, the resident bacterial microbiota is reportedly altered in non-infectious ear diseases, such as otitis media pearls and exudative otitis media. We hypothesized that a single-nucleotide polymorphism in the ATP-binding cassette sub-family C member 11 () gene, which determines earwax properties, regulates the ear canal microbiota.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Osteoarthritis (OA) is increasingly thought to be a multifactorial disease in which sustained gut inflammation serves as a continued source of inflammatory mediators driving degenerative processes at distant sites such as joints. The objective of this study was to use the equine model of naturally occurring obesity associated OA to compare the fecal microbiome in OA and health and correlate those findings to differential gene expression synovial fluid (SF) cells, circulating leukocytes and cytokine levels (plasma, SF) towards improved understanding of the interplay between microbiome and immune transcriptome in OA pathophysiology.

Methods: Feces, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), and SF cells were isolated from healthy skeletally mature horses (n=12; 6 males, 6 females) and those with OA (n=6, 2 females, 4 males).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Influence of gut bacteria on type 2 diabetes: Mechanisms and therapeutic strategy.

World J Diabetes

January 2025

College of Materials and Chemical Engineering, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming 650224, Yunnan Province, China.

The onset and progression of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) are strongly associated with imbalances in gut bacteria, making the gut microbiome a new potential therapeutic focus. This commentary examines the recent publication in . The article explores the association between T2DM and gut microbiota, with a focus on the pathophysiological changes related to dysbiosis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Explore Alteration of Lung and Gut Microbiota in a Murine Model of OVA-Induced Asthma Treated by CpG Oligodeoxynucleotides.

J Inflamm Res

January 2025

Department of Geriatric Respiratory and Critical Care, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Anhui Geriatric Institute, Hefei, Anhui, People's Republic of China.

Aim: We sought to investigate the impact of CpG oligodeoxynucleotides (CpG-ODN) administration on the lung and gut microbiota in asthmatic mice, specifically focusing on changes in composition, diversity, and abundance, and to elucidate the microbial mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effects of CpG-ODN and identify potential beneficial bacteria indicative of its efficacy.

Methods: HE staining were used to analyze inflammation in lung, colon and small intestine tissues. High-throughput sequencing technology targeting 16S rRNA was employed to analyze the composition, diversity, and correlation of microbiome in the lung, colon and small intestine of control, model and CpG-ODN administration groups.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!