| Title | REVIEW] Targeting friend and foe: Emerging therapeutics in the age of gut microbiome and disease |
|---|---|
| Author | Jin Ah Cho1 and Daniel J.F. Chinnapen2,3,4* |
| Address | 1Department of Food and Nutrition, Chungnam National University, Daejeon 34134, Republic of Korea, 2Division of Gastroenterology, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston 02115, USA, 3Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston 02115, USA, 4Harvard Digestive Diseases Center, Boston 02115, USA |
| Bibliography | Journal of Microbiology, 56(3),183–188, 2018, |
| DOI | 10.1007/s12275-018-8037-z |
| Key Words | microbiome, therapeutics, fecal transplantation, inflammatory bowel disease |
| Abstract | Mucosal surfaces that line our gastrointestinal tract are continuously exposed to trillions of bacteria that form a symbiotic relationship and impact host health and disease. It is only beginning to be understood that the cross-talk between the host and microbiome involve dynamic changes in commensal bacterial population, secretion, and absorption of metabolites between the host and microbiome. As emerging evidence implicates dysbiosis of gut microbiota in the pathology and progression of various diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, and allergy, conventional treatments that either overlook the microbiome in the mechanism of action, or eliminate vast populations of microbes via wide-spectrum antibiotics need to be reconsidered. It is also becoming clear the microbiome can influence the body’s response to therapeutic treatments for cancers. As such, targeting the microbiome as treatment has garnered much recent attention and excitement from numerous research labs and biotechnology companies. Treatments range from fecal microbial transplantation to precision-guided molecular approaches. Here, we survey recent progress in the development of innovative therapeutics that target the microbiome to treat disease, and highlight key findings in the interplay between host microbes and therapy. |