Seeking Elusive Microbiome Standards
Posted 14th December 2017 by Jane Williams
“The two reports chart the ecological landscape of microbiome methods ‘in the wild’ and should engender a newfound sense of urgency to optimize methods and to improve reproducibility between laboratories.”
A Model Approach To Microbiome Therapeutics
Posted 16th November 2017 by Jane Williams
By any measure, momentum in the microbiome space keeps building. The 2017 Silicon Valley Bank mid-year Microbiome Investment Trends report provides one of the most up-to-date snapshots: close to USD 1 billion has been invested in microbiome companies globally since 2010, and SVB’s analysts predict the total capital in disclosed equity investments in 2017 alone could be reaching north of USD 400 million by year-end. And my own analysis of Microbiome Partnership Trends, published earlier this year, documents the dramatic increase in partnerships during 2016, a trend that has shown no signs of slowing down.
Engineering the Microbiome – the Next Frontier
Posted 12th October 2017 by Jane Williams
Microbial ecology, our understanding of what determines the robustness and community dynamics of microbial consortia, and synthetic biology, the art of engineering microorganisms to perform particular physiological or metabolic functions, are rapidly becoming allies in the race to develop novel therapeutic strategies in the microbiome space.
Taking on the Cum Hoc and Post Hoc fallacies in Microbiome
Posted 14th September 2017 by Jane Williams
“We need a shift from correlation to causation to support further progress,” says Weizmann Institute of Science’s Eran Elinav, echoing a widely espoused sentiment in the microbiome space. “We spent the first decade finding associations of microbiota with different clinical indications, but now we are discovering that only some of these are phenotypes that are caused by changed microbiota,” adds Elinav who is also scientific co-founder of Israel-based BiomX and DayTwo.
Defining the Microbiome Opportunity
Posted 10th August 2017 by Jane Williams
One of the first challenges we encounter when considering the ‘Microbiome Opportunity’ is to describe exactly what we mean by it. Here, we visualize the opportunity as a multidimensional space that organizes itself along multiple axes.
Introducing Microbiome Futures
Posted 13th July 2017 by Jane Williams
Great expectations have been raised over the last two decades by advances made in unlocking the mysteries of the microbiome and by first inroads taken into harnessing the resulting scientific insights for wellness and therapeutic purposes.