Getting Totally Bugged Out!

If you read the description wrong, human beings are walking cesspools of bacteria, other microorganisms and rot. Yet the average person carries about one to three pounds of these creepy-crawlies and other static life forms all over his or her body. Read this and think of that warm lingering kiss you experienced the other day.

 “The human microbiome (or human microbiota) is the aggregate of microorganisms, a microbiome that resides on the surface and in deep layers of skin (including in mammary glands), in the saliva and oral mucosa, in the conjunctiva, and in the gastrointestinal tracts. They include bacteria, fungi, and archaea. One study indicated they outnumber human cells 10 to 1. Some of these organisms perform tasks that are useful for the human host. However, the majority have been too poorly researched for us to understand the role they play, however communities of microflora have been shown to change their behavior in diseased individuals. Those that are expected to be present, and that under normal circumstances do not cause disease, but instead participate in maintaining health, are deemed members of the normal flora.” Wikipedia.

We all got ‘em, and we need a whole lot of them. And a pile of food companies have figured out that consumers want ‘em too. The global probiotic food industry hits at $30 billion and growing, although it’s not exactly clear that the products actually live up to their marketing statements. It a bit like a food “Wild Wild West” – unregulated, but lots of companies are climbing on the bandwagon.

But there is a secondary possible value to these human passengers that just might revolutionize medical care for some of our most pervasive and destructive diseases. Just as new superbugs, resistant to current strains of available antibiotics, threaten humanity with incurable infections, these microbiomes are now offering hope for an entirely new set of “curables” that might actually address chronic conditions ranging from arthritis to diabetes. Wow! Right there in our guts, in our groins, mouths, etc.

FastCompany.com (January 7^th) visited a little biotech community, just north of San Francisco International Airport, that seems to be drilling down on this less-than-glorious field of medical research. Laden with expensive gene-sequencing equipment and pricey PhDs, these dots of biotech discovery haven’t really generated a proper name for their endeavors, but they believe that those critters and life forms hold a wealth of bio-treasure with lots of potential. Take for example a small company – Second Genome – paving the way for humans to use what they already have to find new medical solutions.

“To [NYU Professor Martin] Blaser and [Second Genome CEO Peter] DiLaura, the microbial communities within us are a mystery that science has not yet fully cracked. But they agree that the link between humans and bacteria is on the cusp of being a legitimate, regulated medical business, and that our microbiome does connect in varying degrees to a host of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, obesity, and asthma. It plays a crucial role in our immune and digestive systems, they believe; it may even have some relation to autism and depression. In other words, while yogurt and supplements may be overhyped, the potential for microbiome research could be limitless.

“Second Genome’s mission to become a new kind of drug company puts its founders ‘at the frontier of scientific discovery,’ says Blaser. But frontiers can be harsh environments for startups, especially ones seeking a breakthrough at the far reaches of our current medical knowledge. Consider the complexity of understanding how trillions of bacteria interact with one another; then how those bacteria interact with the host organism (you); and then how to create from that knowledge a drug that strengthens or emulates your bacteria so as to render a beneficial impact on your health, an impact so clear and decisive that it can be affirmed by government drug regulators…

“As he sees it, [DiLaura’s] company’s potential lies in understanding the relationship—‘the conversation,’ as he and his colleagues term it—between our bacteria and our bodies. For centuries we have listened only to our bodies’ side of the exchange, but a host of new technologies allow us to listen to our bacteria’s, too. ‘I can now wiretap that conversation in the microbiome,’ says Mohan Iyer, Second Genome’s chief business officer. ‘Before this, no one was listening in. The conversation will tell us plenty of things we don’t yet understand, such as our propensity for disease, our progression of disease, our flare-ups of disease.’” FastCompany.com.

Analyzing feces and human organic travelers does seem that attractive to most of us, but at a time when austerity measures are slashing government support for basic research, these little pockets of discovery represent the next best hope not only for the solutions that they develop but for the cutting edge future jobs that they may create for an America used to growing new industries based on innovation. But there is a catch, unlike the government-sponsored research of old, these new start-ups have limited capital and investors who do not have the stomach (sorry!) for longer-term exploration without tangible and profitable near-term results.

And not everyone in the biotech community believes those results are anywhere near being developed. “It’s not that people doubt the science—they just wonder if the science is outpacing the development of an actual product. ‘Even if the effects are real, and I’m sure that some of them are, people are going to struggle to make a workable technology out of it,’ says Bill Hanage, an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. This trajectory is, unfortunately, common: Gene therapy, considered an area of unbounded possibility just a decade ago, has yet to deliver on its promise.

“Goodman and DiLaura share this concern. So do some of the other funders behind Second Genome. ‘The first thing we asked was, ‘Is this a science project? Is this space ready to be productized?’ ’ recalls Mike Carusi, a partner at Advanced Technology Ventures, which has invested about $5.5 million in Second Genome so far. A crucial worry had to do with whether research was demonstrating a correlation or causality when it came to human maladies.” FastCompany.com.

In addition to finding solutions in those human travelers, new antibiotic research has also found promise in dirt, the final resting place of organic decomposition and detritus. Like the initial results from a “dirt-derivative” developed by a private sector start-up, NovaBiotic Pharmaceuticals, which has generated qualities not seen in earlier antibiotics:  “Teixobactin works by targeting the building blocks of the bacterial cell wall. Most antibiotics target proteins inside the cell to disrupt it, but Teixobactin binds to two different lipids that are necessary in cell wall production. So even if one developed resistance, the other could still be targeted. In traditional tests to coax bacteria into mutating resistance to a drug, the researchers just kept being able to kill the bacteria.” Washington Post, January 7^th. But will this work and will there be enough research in the private sector to make this a field of meaningful research? Who’s going to pay for such research going forward, and will that be enough?

Sadly, the requirement of a straight and foreseeable near-term monetization of research imposed by private sector investors is the Achilles Heel of transferring the bulk of the cost of innovative American technological research from public to private coffers. Who knows how many jobs we will not create, how many scientific solutions will lie unsolved (at least by the US) and how many diseases will continue to decimate because our researchers’ funds have such severe limitations? To grow and remain economically powerful in a globally competitive environment, we need to accelerate our investment in infrastructure, education and research. Instead, at almost every turn, we are slashing budgets for each of these essential growth drivers, leaving research increasing to other countries who understand what it takes to grow.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as much as I am excited whenever I see funding for new research, I am saddened that our reprioritization of austerity above everything else is going to have lasting negative effects on all of us here in the United States.