Development and implementation of bioinformatics platform for defining a microbial prototype for the treatment of bipolar disorder

The last two decades have seen an exponential increase in our understanding of the impact of the human microbiome on almost all aspects of human disease. The potential of therapies that augment our microbiomes are being realized for to address a wide variety of diseases. An exciting new area of research is based on the connection between the brain and the bacteria that live in your gastrointestinal tract (gut). Our work has shown that a fecal microbial transplant (FMT) of gut bacteria from healthy donors to those suffering from depression significantly improves their depression scores and ultimately health outcomes. FMT is not without risk and limitations, and a more effective strategy is to develop cocktails of defined bacteria to treat specific disease indications. The proposed research program will be microbiome DNA sequence data to identify specific strains of bacteria associated with clinical response and to develop analysis pipelines for Taylored Biotherapeutics for future studies and quality control measures for any product they develop.

Faculty Supervisor:

Michael Surette

Student:

Partner:

Taylored Biotherapeutics

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

McMaster University

Program: