Together with colleagues at Atlantia Clinical Trials and DSM Nutritional Products we have investigated how polyphenol-rich extracts modulate the gut microbiota conferring cardiovascular benefits to humans. The 4 week supplementation with the water-soluble tomato extract Fruitflow® led to decreased trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) levels in fasting blood and urine, along with significant changes in microbiome composition. The results (published in the Journal of Nutrition) support earlier findings that polyphenol-rich extracts can lower plasma TMAO in overweight and obese adults related to gut microbiota modulation.

Over the past decade advances in technology and understanding have progressed the microbiome arena into a multi-billion-euro industry. SeqBiome which has unparalleled experience and expertise in the space is a major beneficiary of this expansion and is now working with some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical, biotech and food companies across Europe and the USA. In anticipation of further growth, the Company is strengthening its board of directors.
Serving as a Non-Executive Board Director, Frank will bring 30-years of experience building shareholder-value in early-stage companies.
“The ability to quickly and expertly analyse a diverse range of microbiomes is a really timely proposition. A wide variety of life-sciences companies, from pharma to food, are interested in developing new microbiome-related products and services. SeqBiome is at the leading edge of this trend, and I am excited to join their board and help drive growth and an outcome for all shareholders”, said Frank Walsh, newly nominated to join The SeqBiome Board of Directors.
“I am absolutely delighted that we crossed paths and now have Frank on our side to help take Seqbiome to new heights. Frank has been on the start-up journey across so many companies we are delighted to be able to tap into his network and knowledge”, said Marcus Claesson, co-founder and CEO of SeqBiome.

A new publication, led by SeqBiome’s Marcus O’Brien, entitled ‘The Athlete Gut Microbiome and its Relevance to Health and Performance: A Review’ was published today in the highly regarded peer review journal Sports Medicine. The review notes that multiple studies have shown a potential bidirectional relationship between exercise and the gut microbiome, with some studies demonstrating the possibility of influencing this relationship. Importantly, this could provide a useful route to influence athletic performance via microbiome manipulation, a valuable prospect for many elite athletes and their teams.

We are thrilled that both our CEO and CTO are now among the 35 Irish scientists on the Highly Cited Researchers list from Clarivate in 2022! This list features the researchers in the top 1% of the Web of Science citation index and recognises pioneers in their field whose citation records position them in the very highest strata of research influence and impact. 

SeqBiome is delighted to expand the executive team with Dr Jim Collins as our new Chief Operating Officer! Jim has over 20 years of international experience in the development and scale-up of genome analysis technologies for genetic testing applications. Prior to joining SeqBiome, he led the development and deployment of sequencing-based tests with a focus on women’s health at Invitae, a genetic testing company based in San Francisco. Before that, Jim directed the development of technologies for non-invasive prenatal screening at Singular Bio (acquired by Invitae) and CellScape and platform technologies for genomic analysis at Complete Genomics, Affymetrix and Agilent. Jim holds BSc and PhD degrees in Microbiology from University College Cork.

A joint publication by Nestle Research and SeqBiome has provided new insights into the relationship between the microbial community of water kefir and flavour. Yet another example of the relevance of the microbiome when developing new functional foods. Highlights include

• A temporal characterization of a model water kefir using multi-omics approaches.
• Revealing the high prevalence of Z. mobilis and discovery of two potential new Curvibacter species in the samples.
• Identification of a unique chemical profile, dominated by gluconic acid.
• Uncovering microbial contributors to water kefir flavours obtained through omics correlation.
• And, ultimately, providing, important insights that will enable large scale water kefir production.

Our CEO and bioinformaticians have published a paper in Gut Microbes together with colleagues in Danone and APC Microbiome Ireland. The randomized, double-blinded, controlled clinical trial shows how the microbiome, perturbed by H. pylory eradication therapy, recovers faster after consuming a multi-strain fermented milk product (L. paracasei CNCM I-1518, L. paracasei CNCM I-3689, L. rhamnosus CNCM I-3690 + 4 yogurt strains). These findings will be important when developing microbiome-protective probiotics in the future.

With the growing size and complexity of microbiome datasets, Machine Learning has showed great promise in classification and prediction of states of health and disease. As an Editor of the special issue of ML and the microbiome, our CEO here describes some published cutting-edge research in the field. He is also the Chair of the EU COST Action ML4Microbiome which aims to standardise, optimise and disseminate the use of ML for microbiome research.

SeqBiome is delighted to receive further recognition of our microbiological expertise and global standing, with our CTO Prof Paul Cotter being invited as Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Microbiology.

The SeqBiome team also contributed to a publication by Irish and Swiss researchers in the journal Allergy entitled “Higher levels of bacterial DNA in serum associate with severe and fatal COVID-19”. Among other things, the study provides additional evidence for a loss of epithelial barrier function in patients with severe COVID-19.

More and more scientists are turning to SeqBiome for their microbiome analysis. SeqBiome has together with colleagues in AO Research Institute Davos, Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research, Cornell University, Hospital for Special Surgery and APC Microbiome Ireland, published a study on murine bone healing, inflammation and the microbiome in Mediators of Inflammation. The findings suggests that butyrate can regulate systemic inflammation and is important for healing bone fractures.

SeqBiome CTO, Paul Cotter, was part of an international approach, coordinated by the City University of New York and published in Nature Medicine, to establish the STORMS ‘Strengthening The Organization and Reporting of Microbiome Studies’ checklist. This checklist provides guidance for concise and complete reporting of microbiome studies that will facilitate manuscript preparation, peer review, and reader comprehension of publications and comparative analysis of published results.