Custom Service for Microbiome Therapeutics
BOC Sciences provides integrated solutions for microbiome-based therapeutics. With extensive experience in strain improvement and large-scale fermentation capabilities, we have the ability to provide beneficial engineered microorganisms, probiotics, and perform large-scale production of microbially sourced ingredients such as antibiotics, all of which are important components of microbiome therapeutics.
What is Microbiome Therapeutics?
Microbiome therapeutics aim to alter an individual's gastrointestinal (GI) microbiome (additive, subtractive, or modulatory approaches) to treat or prevent disease, often using natural or engineered microorganisms, probiotics, prebiotics, small molecules, bacteriophages, and bacteriocins.
- Additive approach: The administration of individual strains or microbiota to supplement the host microbiome with new strains.
- Subtractive approach: Aims to eliminate specific members of the microbiome with the help of the antimicrobial activity of bacteriocins and phages.
- Modulatory approach: Regulates the composition of endogenous microorganisms or their interaction with the host.
The GI microbiome plays an integral role in overall body homeostasis, and these complex communities contain over 100 species of bacteria, all of which can interact with their hosts in different ways, and their alteration can lead to the development and progression of disease. Since microbiota dysbiosis is associated with most human diseases, microbiome therapeutics applying various strategies hold promise as treatments for disease and have the potential to overcome key issues such as interpersonal differences and stability.
With the development of synthetic biology, engineered microorganisms and probiotics targeting specific cells, tissues or pathways have the potential to be targeted therapeutically, manipulating single-strain microorganism or entire microbial consortia to produce certain therapeutic molecules or antitoxins. Microbiome therapeutics in which the microbiome can be engineered to lead to the development of chemical entities, similarly, phages can be engineered to add or remove specific functions in the microbial community. In addition, some non-living agents produced by microbial fermentation, microbial metabolites such as antibiotics and peptides, can be used as small-molecule regulatory therapies.
Fig. 1 Microbiome-based therapeutics (Gulliver, 2022)
Methods of Microbiome Therapeutics
Microbial-based therapeutics include antibiotics, probiotics, prebiotics, phage therapy, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), and microbiome mimetics, all aimed at modifying the microbiome to treat disease.
| Microbiome Therapeutics | Abstract | Advantages | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Modulatory approach | Antibiotics | Antibiotics are compounds that target bacteria and are therefore designed to treat and prevent bacterial infections. Modification of the microbiota through selective administration of antibiotics is one potential mechanism. Antibiotics need to be carefully designed to minimize off-target or adverse effects and may form a key component of future microbial-based therapies. |
|
| Prebiotics | Prebiotics mainly include readily phenols and phytochemicals, fermentable dietary fiber, human milk oligosaccharides and other oligosaccharides (e.g., fructo-oligosaccharides, galacto-oligosaccharides), and conjugated linoleic acid and polyunsaturated fatty acids. |
| |
| Subtractive approach | Phage therapy | Phages are viruses that specifically infect bacterial cells by attaching to them and injecting their genomes into the cells, where the viral genome interferes with bacterial action, thereby preventing bacterial infection. |
|
| Bacteriocins | Bacteriocins are proteins or peptide toxins produced by bacteria that inhibit the growth of similar or closely related strains of bacteria. Bacteriocins are used in dairy product preservation, food preservation, and for microbial infection control in the veterinary industry. |
| |
| Additive approach | Probiotics | Probiotics are defined as "Live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit to the host." Probiotics are natural or genetically engineered microorganisms that colonize or are temporarily present in a specific body part to confer health benefits. |
|
| FMT | FMT restores bacterial diversity and health-related function in acceptors by introducing fecal-associated microbiota from healthy donors and can be used to treat dysbiosis-related disorders. |
| |
| Microbiome mimetics | Microbiome mimetics can include microbial-derived products, small molecules, or host-derived products. Microbiome mimetics replicate the interactions between the microbiome and the host to produce therapeutically beneficial results. |
| |
Our Services for Microbiome Therapeutics
- Strain improvement of engineered microorganisms used in microbiome therapeutics
- Fermentation production of microbial metabolites used in microbiome therapeutics
- Fermentation process development
- Strain identification and preparing the GRAS documentation
Why Choose BOC Sciences?
- Multiple techniques are employed to manipulate microbial genes
- Integrated solutions for microbiome-based therapeutics
- Manufacturing of beneficial products of microbial origin
- Production process control and tracking
- Patented and proprietary manufacturing method
- Lowest cost of production
Reference
- Gulliver, E. L., et al. Review article: the future of microbiome-based therapeutics, Aliment. Pharmacol. Ther., 2022, 56(2):192-208.
