The secret cures that may be lurking in your gut

The potential of using bacteria as medicine has taken a significant step forward, after Melbourne researchers discovered and captured more than 100 new species.

The potential of using bacteria as medicine has taken a significant step forward, after Melbourne researchers discovered and captured more than 100 new species.

The team has set up an international library of gut microbiota in laboratory freezers around the world, and have made the bacteria’s genetic blueprint publicly available, to fast-track the global race towards developing a new field of therapies called “live biotherapeutics”.

Researchers from the Hudson Institute of Medical Research and Monash University have now been funded to start building a library of the unique gut bacteria carried by and shared between Australians.

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Researchers will start building a library of the unique gut bacteria carried by and shared between Australians.

Lead researcher Dr Sam Forster said their discovery would allow his team and others internationally to better identify what bacteria lived in the human gut, and what strains could be useful as new treatments.

“Before it was the potential we could do it. Now we’ve got these things in the freezer that we can measure in patients or healthy people,” Dr Forster said.

“Each of these health associated bacteria could be a therapeutic that you could put back in as a probiotics, or a direct colonisation treatment.”

The human gut carries as many cells as exist across their entire body, with evidence growing around how gut microbiota contributes to a range of diseases.

Imbalances or deficits in the human gut microbiome have being linked to obesity, allergies, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, auto-immune conditions, depression, infectious diseases and some cancers.

Evidence is growing around how gut microbiota contributes to a range of diseases.

The Melbourne researchers, with European and UK colleges, took faecal samples from 20 patients, growing more than 700 individual bacterial strains. Of these, 173 had never been genetically sequenced, and 105 had never been isolated and stored on their own.

“By genome sequencing you can look for the functions of the bacteria,” Dr Forster said.

“We can identify candidates that would be safe to put into people, as well as those you would never put back into the human gut.

“We now have this collection that is the most diverse collection of gut bacteria in the world.

“It’s a game changer for research.”

The findings were published today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

A $700,000 grant from the Australian Research Council to the Hudson and Monash University team will see them set up an Australian library, isolating gut bacteria from about 500 people, at the Clayton laboratories.