Our CEO Marcus Claesson is giving a talk about his group’s research on the gut microbiome and inflammatory bowel disease at the Microbiome Data Congress at the Convene conference center in Boston on the 13th Nov. SeqBiome is proud to be one of the sponsors of the event.
We are delighted to have contributed to the positive outcomes from the Freya Bioscience’s first Phase 1 clinical study of its lead asset FB101, which is an investigational immunotherapeutic targeting vaginal microbial dysbiosis. Together also with Atlantia Clinical Trials, we evaluated the longitudinal change in the vaginal microbiome after vaginal administration of FB101 in women with asymptomatic vaginal tract dysbiosis, and found that FB101 let to a rapid and sustained switch from a dysbiotic to a Lactobacillus-dominated microbiome. Half of the women showed that engraftment of the Lactobacilli species was established, as determined by strain-level engraftment analysis. Freya intends to expand studies of FB101 for improving fertility outcomes and enhancing the success rates of IVF.
Read more in the Microbiome Times.
Our CTO is the last author in a recently published study in Nature Communications, the most in-depth investigation to date of mother-to-infant transmission of common gut bacteria. The project that is titled MicrobeMum shows that the transfer of gut bacteria from a mother to an infant is a common phenomenon, which is strongly influenced by external factors including mode of delivery and exposure to antibiotics in labour. The findings could support the development of targeted probiotic supplements based on these bacteria, with potential benefits to boost immune systems, increase microbial infection resistance, fight disease and even aid digestion.
SeqBiome is proud to have sponsored a conference on the next-generation bioinformatics tools for microbiome research hosted at the beautiful Aula Maxima at University College Cork. It was hosted jointly by one of the world’s largest microbiome institutes APC Microbiome Ireland and the COST Action ML4Microbiome, which is led by CEO Marcus Claesson and has 170 members across 35 countries. The aim of this 4-year Action is to optimise, standardise and disseminate best practice of Machine Learning for analysing human microbiome data.
In addition to progressing this highly cross-disciplinary field and network, ML4Microbiome has trained a large number of young researchers in these sciences, whereas others have obtained means to carry out guest research projects across European labs.
Together with a team from the London Agri Food Innovation Clinic, SeqBiome showed that the effects on the microbiome of a three week consumption of the MOJU Prebiotic Shot drink. The drink contained a mixture of prebiotic fibres rich in polyphenols, which significantly changed gut microbiota alpha and beta diversity in healthy individuals, resulting an increase of the beneficial bacteria Bifidobacterium adolesentis and Lachnospiraceae CAG-81 sp900066785. People generally are not consuming enough dietary fibre, and there is disparity between what we eat and what we think we eat. These encouraging results demonstrate the tangible benefit of a convenient daily fibre top-up in the form of a functional fruit juice drink with a mixture of prebiotic fibres.
The study was published in Foods.
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-b