I-Corps: Gut Microbiome Analytic Service

George Washington University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The microorganisms that reside in our intestine form a complex ecosystem called the Gut Microbiome. A balanced gut microbiome is important for overall health and wellbeing. Research confirms that the gut microbiome plays an important role in various biochemical activities in the human body and an imbalance in these activities can result in discomfort and sometimes lead to disease processes. Although the importance of gut microbiome in health has been acknowledged, the available technology has not been sufficient to perform comprehensive gut microbiome monitoring in a cost effective fashion. However, recent advancements in next-generation sequencing technologies now allow for the entire microbiome from samples, such as fecal, to be sequenced (called metagenomics) inexpensively. Rapid analysis of the large amount of metagenomic data, a major bottleneck, has been resolved by this I-Corps team though the development of a novel algorithm and accompanying software (called Cenuscope) that can provide a gut microbiome analysis as a service (sequencing metagenomes from fecal samples) to individuals with rapid turnaround. This I-Corps team proposes to develop a rapid and reliable gut microbiome monitoring product, GutFeeling and an associated GutFeeling KnowledgeBase (GutFeelingKB), which will allow the proposed team to provide detailed reports to customers and also suggest dietary changes. The advent of low cost metagenome sequencing technologies has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of human microbiomes and their role in human health and disease pathogenesis, as well as provide unprecedented value in diagnostics and therapeutics. But these technologies result in terabytes of data and information that is difficult to process, analyze and track in a clinical setting. Greater access to the corresponding analytical and data integration capability is required by the medical and research communities in order to achieve significant progress in patient care through the use of genomic data. Analysis software, such as CensuScope, plays an indispensable role in analyzing the components of the metagenomic data in less than 15 minutes (compared to hours or days for existing tools) and further predicting functional attributes. The team's goal is to develop a rapid and reliable gut microbiome monitoring product, GutFeeling and an associated GutFeeling KnowledgeBase (GutFeelingKB). The proposed approach is to provide a customer report which will contain information regarding the organisms present in a person's gut, evaluation of their baseline healthy range, and visual representation displaying regular activity and comparison of their microbiome with other healthy individuals. The team will establish a KnowledgeBase (GutFeelingKB) of microbial abundance information from publicly available datasets supplemented with data obtained from clients over time and use this as a method to evaluate a person's gut microbiome. The team will then overlay this profile with microbial abundance profiles from people having similar dietary habits for example. Development of such comparison mechanisms will eventually allow to offer recommendations for lifestyle and diet changes for customers to improve their overall wellbeing, aid in weight loss, or provide solutions to serious health issues (e.g. autoimmune diseases, food allergies, chronic stomach pains).