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Not all bacteria is bad for you: think yogurt and other
fermented dairy products. The company Seres Health launched last month with the
hopes to develop the first regulated clinically approved bacteria-filled pill.
The drug would be used to treat diseases associated with disruptions to the
microbes inside the human body.
Companies are looking at bacteria as a new area of focus for
drug development. Seres is planning to use live bacteria to help patients with
out-of-balance microbial communities.
The healthy human body is home to 10,000 or so species of
microbes - which outnumber human cells ten to one. Recent studies also show
that the microbe can affect a patient's health and that swapping bacteria can
cure gastrointestinal infections and potentially treat conditions such as
inflammation and obesity.
"People are just now starting to appreciate how big a role
it plays in our life, health, and disease," says Seres Health CEO David Berry,
a 2007 MIT Technology Review Innovator
Under 35.
Seres Health uses molecular analyses to understand how
members of a microbiome - the collection of microbes inhabiting a body -
interact with each other and with the human body. The company will examine the
difference between microbes in healthy patients and those with a particular
conditions because even in two healthy people, there can be variation in the
exact species of microbes. However, there is consistency regarding which types
and patterns of genes are on and off when the full microbiome ecosystem is
considered.
This means that by observing the functional roles of
microorganisms which are out of balance, Seres can try to restore balance by
delivering microbes capable of producing or regulating those functions.
Seres Health is already testing a live-bacteria pill
treatment for C. difficile in
patients. "We know what organisms we are adding," says Berry. "We make them in
ways deemed appropriate for making drugs," which enables reproducibility, he
says. The company is also developing microbe-based treatments for two
inflammatory and metabolic diseases, conditions less obviously connected to
disruptions in gut microbes.
Image Credit" phatisakolpap/iStockphoto
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Pill Filled with Bacteria Instead of Drugs
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