A synthetic microbiome therapy, tested in mice, protects against severe symptoms of a gut infection that is notoriously difficult-to-treat and potentially life threatening in humans, according to a team of researchers at Penn State. The team developed the treatment for Clostridioides difficile, or C. difficile, a bacterium that can cause severe diarrhea, abdominal pain and colon inflammation. C. difficile can overgrow when the balance of the gut microbiome - the trillions of organisms that keep your body healthy - is disrupted. The team said their findings could lead to the development of new probiotic strategies for humans to treat C. difficile infections as an alternative to antibiotics and conventional fecal microbiota transplants.
While it draws on the idea of human fecal transplants, a medical procedure where bacteria from a healthy donor's stool is transferred to a patient's gastrointestinal tract to restore balance to the microbiome, the new approach doesn't require any fecal matter. Instead, this microbiome therapy uses fewer but more precise bacteria strains that have been linked to C. difficile suppression. It was as effective as human fecal transplants in mice against C. difficile infection and with fewer safety concerns.
The findings were published today (March 3) in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. The researchers also filed a provisional application to patent the technology described in the paper.
"We need to be much more targeted in our microbiome interventions," said senior author Jordan Bisanz, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Early Career Chair in Host-Microbiome Interactions.
He emphasized that applications that improve people's lives often begin with basic discovery science.
"This project is a first step in trying to understand how complex microbial communities function to affect the host, then turning that around to learn how to develop microbiome-targeted therapies," Bisanz said.
