Wash or Wipe debate and the science of the microbiome

[s28]

A lengthy article on 'fecal transplants' apparently it is hot dinner party chit chat in New York

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/01/excrement-experiment

and audio discussion of the article

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/out-loud-podcast-fecal-transplants

for those who don't have time to listen to the full audio feature it contains a comment from the writer saying words to the effect of

"i'll be less strict on telling my kids to wash their hands after being to the toilet"

Some general articles on the microbiome

Nature magazine

http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/humanmicrobiota/

HUMAN MICROBIOTA
The human body is colonized by a vast number of microbes, collectively referred to as the human microbiota. The link between these microbes and our health is the focus of a growing number of research initiatives, and new insights are emerging rapidly, some of which we are proud to present in this special collection.


http://www.economist.com/node/21560559

The Economist

Modern medicine - Microbes maketh man

People are not just people. They are an awful lot of microbes, too

 

[s28]

http://www.investegate.co.uk/purete...me-focus-with--commense-/201603310900026660T/

Commense Advances Microbiome Platform Targeting Early Childhood Health



Founding scientists and advisors named and exclusive worldwide license obtained to prevent and treat disease through microbiome-based interventions in early childhood



Boston, Massachusetts, March 31, 2016 - Commense, focused on preventing and treating disease through microbiome-based interventions in infancy and early childhood, advances its discovery and development platform, names its founding scientists and advisors and executes an exclusive license in the microbiome field.

"A child's early interactions with microbes can play an essential role in health and are believed to impact the later development of serious conditions such as asthma, food allergies, type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis," said David Steinberg, co-founder of Commense and Executive Vice President at PureTech. "We are pleased to advance our work in the early childhood microbiome with the expansion of our pipeline and the addition of an esteemed group of advisors."

Commense's work builds on the decades of data supporting the "hygiene hypothesis," which suggests that a lack of early childhood exposure to key microbes increases the risk of numerous early childhood diseases common in developed countries. Commense is developing a pipeline of novel therapeutics for the prevention and treatment of disease based on a deep understanding of these human/microbe interactions and their impact on health. Supporting this pipeline is Commense's platform to characterise and design microbiome-based therapeutics to potentially restore these "missing microbes," along with a suite of technologies designed to improve measurement and diagnosis, delivery and microbial colonisation.

Exclusive Worldwide License

Commense has obtained an exclusive, worldwide license from New York University on a key building block of its platform, an approach focused on replenishing and bolstering the microbial exposure that a baby experiences at birth during passage through the birth canal. This technology is designed to enable microbial transfer in newborns who may not receive the vaginal microbiome, including those delivered by caesarean section (C-section). The work supporting this technology is from the lab of Commense co-founder and Scientific Advisory Board member Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Centre, and was published in the February 1, 2016 issue of Nature Medicine.

"Until very recently, every surviving mammal has been delivered through the birth canal. In C-sections, the lack of the protective microbes with which we've co-evolved could be very important for many conditions, including diabetes, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease, that we now know involve the microbiome," said Dr. Rob Knight, a coauthor of the Nature Medicine study, and a member of Commense's Scientific Advisory Board (SAB).

The study demonstrated that vaginal microbial transfer could be performed to seed newborns delivered by C-section with microbes derived from the mother's birth canal, in a procedure mimicking natural birth. This procedure enhanced the levels of potentially beneficial microbes throughout the 30-day follow-up period. Commense is extending this approach by developing microbial and non-microbial interventions that could benefit millions of children each year worldwide.

"These extremely exciting initial data give promise to the hope that all newborns might receive the potential health advantages of their mothers' beneficial microbes, in a manner reminiscent of the now-established benefits of faecal microbial transfers for C. difficile infections," said Dr. Dominguez-Bello. "We've been overwhelmed by the support and positive response to the study by mothers, physicians, and researchers."

Numerous studies have documented associations between C-sections and increased rates of allergies, immune disorders, asthma, autism and obesity. In the United States, about one in three babies is delivered by C-section, and in some countries the rate of C-section exceeds 50 percent.

Founding Scientists and Advisors

Commense was co-founded by PureTech Health ("PureTech," LSE: PRTC) and a group of the world's leading researchers in the field of the human microbiome and its role in infant and maternal health. The founding scientists and advisors include:

• Rob Knight, Ph.D., (SAB Member) - Professor in the Department of Paediatrics and Professor Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego); Director of UC San Diego's Centre for Microbiome Innovation; co-founder of the Earth Microbiome Project and American Gut; pioneer of key computational and experimental techniques for characterizing and designing complex microbial communities in different ecosystems; author of TED book Follow Your Gut: The Enormous Impact of Tiny Microbes;

• Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, Ph.D., (Scientific Co-Founder and SAB Member) - Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Centre; lead author of the Nature Medicine study and pioneer in characterizing and understanding microbial exposures early in life;

• Martin J. Blaser, M.D., (Scientific Co-Founder and SAB Member) - Professor of Microbiology, NYU Langone Medical Centre; Director of the Human Microbiome Program; internationally recognized for his pioneering work in discovering the progressive loss of microbial diversity in the microbiota of people living in developed countries and its effects on health; and author of Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fuelling Our Modern Plagues;

• B. Brett Finlay, Ph.D., (Scientific Co-Founder and SAB Member) - Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of British Columbia; pioneer in understanding how loss of key microbes in children can affect disease, including atopic diseases and allergy; and author of forthcoming book Let Them Eat Dirt, which will explore how the microbes that inhabit our bodies influence childhood development;

• Joseph St. Geme III, M.D., (Advisor and SAB Member) - Physician-in-Chief and Chairman of Paediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; Professor of Paediatrics and Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania; and leading clinician and researcher in the area of paediatric host-bacterial interactions; and

• Sam Kass, (Advisor and Commense Board Member) - former Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition Policy at the White House and former Executive Director of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! childhood health campaign.

"The more we learn about the microbiome, the more we realize how fundamental it is to human health," said Dr. Blaser. "We believe that one of the most important windows of exposure to beneficial microbes is at birth, so Commense represents a critical step forward for infants and mothers."

About Commense

Commense is pioneering a deep understanding of the microbiome early in life and its fundamental role in promoting a lifetime of health. Drawing insights from natural exposures to beneficial microbes, Commense is developing approaches to guide the priming, seeding, and maintaining of the microbiome in infants and children. Co-founded by PureTech Health ("PureTech," LSE: PRTC) and working with the world's leading microbiome scientists, physicians, and product developers, Commense is developing a novel category of products to address critical unmet needs in paediatric populations.

 

[s28]

Cambridge Innovation Capital plc and IP Group plc announce the creation of Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute spin-out company, Microbiotica

Based on ground-breaking research at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute into the role of the human microbiome in disease

Goal is to create the world's leading company focused on microbiome biology and its use in medicine

Cambridge Innovation Capital and IP Group co-lead £8 million funding round


19th December 2016

Cambridge Innovation Capital plc ("CIC"), a Cambridge-based investor in technology and healthcare companies, and IP Group plc (LSE: IPO) ("IP Group"), the developer of intellectual property-based businesses, announce the creation of Microbiotica Ltd ("Microbiotica"), a newly formed spin-out company from the UK's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute ("the Sanger Institute") based at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton, Cambridge.

Microbiotica will look to develop and commercialise new defined bacteriotherapies based on the human gut microbiome. CIC and IP Group are co-leading this investment, with a £4 million contribution from each party, to provide total initial funding of £8 million.

Microbiotica has been established to commercialise ground-breaking research, conducted in the Host-Microbiotica Interactions Laboratory ("HMIL") at the Sanger Institute, into the role of the human microbiome in health and disease and its application to medicine. The HMIL is led by Dr Trevor Lawley and collaborates with the Professor Gordon Dougan research group. The Sanger Institute teams have made significant breakthroughs in the analysis and understanding of the human microbiome, combining an extensive DNA sequencing capability with novel culturing methods, to build a first-in-class gut microbiome culture collection and reference genome library. Since 2010, Dr Lawley's group has cultured and sequenced the genome of thousands of bacterial strains from the gut of humans, representing the world's largest culture collection of intestinal bacteria. This has given the group important new insights into the association of these bacteria with a range of diseases. Added to this, the group has developed a leading expertise in humanised models for the development of live bacterial therapeutics and exceptional bioinformatics capability.

Microbiotica has been granted unique access to these resources and capabilities and will use it to gain unparalleled insights into the microbial communities in both healthy and diseased individuals, enabling the identification of specific disease-related bacteria, patient-stratification strategies and novel therapeutics. Microbiotica has also been granted exclusive rights to existing potentially therapeutic bacterial mixes that have shown striking effects in novel models of disease, and which will be progressed into pre-clinical development over the coming year.

Recognition of the importance of the microbiome, the body's trillions of resident bacteria, represents a paradigm-shift in our understanding of its impact on human health and disease. This creates major opportunities in the diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of disease including enteric infections, autoimmune disorders, metabolic disorders, cancer and neurological disease.

Microbiotica's science will be directed by Dr Lawley, who will be Chief Scientific Officer. The company will be led by Dr Mike Romanos who, as Chief Executive Officer, brings a wealth of experience as a seasoned drug discoverer and entrepreneur in the biotech sector. Dr Romanos previously held senior global roles in GSK and as CEO built Crescendo Biologics. Professor Gordon Dougan is also a co-founder. CIC and IP Group will each appoint a director to the board of Microbiotica. The company will use the funds to establish labs within the Wellcome Genome Campus at Hinxton, Cambridge, to progress multiple live bacteriotherapy discovery programmes into development.



Mike Romanos, CEO of Microbiotica, said, "It has been a privilege to work with my co-founders Trevor Lawley and Gordon Dougan to create the concept of Microbiotica as a leading player in microbiome-based therapeutics. We are very excited to be working with CIC and IP Group to now turn the vision into reality as we start to build the company, based at the Wellcome Genome Campus, leveraging the strengths of the Sanger Institute to create new medicines."

Dr Trevor Lawley, CSO of Microbiotica said, "Our work at the Sanger Institute has shown that the human microbiome is important for health and disease, and is itself a therapeutic target. I am delighted that the establishment of Microbiotica will allow us to harness the therapeutic potential of the complex microbial community in the body to create novel treatments and help improve human health."

Dr Robert Tansley, Investment Director at CIC, added, "Research into the microbiome is a fascinating area of study with huge commercial potential. We have been working closely with Mike, Trevor, IP Group and the Sanger Institute to ensure that Microbiotica has an excellent foundation and can benefit from the tremendous body of work created by Trevor and his team. With our founding investment in Congenica, the genome discovery and diagnostics company, we have been privileged to be instrumental in the creation of two spin-out companies based on world class research from the Sanger Institute."

Dr Sam Williams, Head of Biotech at IP Group, said, "We are delighted to be involved in the creation of what promises to be an exciting new commercial approach to the microbiome. By exploring the fundamentals of gut flora distribution and genetics, Microbiotica has an opportunity to take a lead in the understanding how the microbiome can be used to not only develop new therapeutics for a range of diseases, but also how to stratify patients according to their microbial profile, identify links with disease and exploit its full potential for human healthcare. This investment reflects IP Group's approach to new company formation in the biotech sector, backing only the science which promises to bring about revolutionary approaches to human medicine and the teams that can deliver them."

Professor Sir Mike Stratton, Director of the Sanger Institute, said, "The Wellcome Genome Campus is home to research institutes, spin-out and start-up companies, academic-industry partnerships and Genomics England; all dedicated to driving and leading pioneering research and innovation in the sphere of genomes and biodata. Microbiotica grew out of Sanger Institute science and I'm delighted that Trevor and his team will continue to be immersed in the intellectual environment on campus. The Biodata Innovation Centre and the companies in it is the first major step in our progression of our vision for this Campus as a global hub for genomics and biodata.

http://www.investegate.co.uk/cambri...creation-of-microbiotica/201612190700111721S/

 

[sensible-indian-fan]

What does it say in the end?

Wash or wipe?

 

[s28]

I think wash

 

[s28]

There is another thread on this forum about the Microbiome on the subject of faecal transplants. i.e. for some diseases which drugs seem unable to cure (e.g. Crohns) there are positive results being seen by transferring one persons healthy into the guts of another! Amazing huh?

 

[Donal Cozzie]

What does it say in the end?

Wash or wipe?

Shouldn't matter to you since IIRC you've used sand

 

[Thivagar]

I wipe and then wash. I never just wipe. This is not 13th century dark age Europe.