/ BY JACQUELINE DETWILER /I
↓ THE BODY MECHANIC
COLUMNS32 June 2019 _ PopularMechanics.comGALACTICART/ALAMY^STOCK^ PHOTODoctors suspect that the
first illnesses to be treated with
hyperspecific microbiome drugs
will be those caused by the
bacterium Clostridium difficile.T’S A WEIRD TIME for microbes, a sort
of interspecies interregnum in which
humans have realized that microbes
hold way more power than we previously
thought but haven’t yet wrested any of
it back for ourselves. Over the past sev-
eral years, studies have implicated the
community of bacteria in the human gut in
pretty much every terrifying malady that
cannot currently be reliably prevented or
cured (see: autism, cancer, neurodegener-
ative disease). So far, it’s pretty clear that
exterminating the entire internal rain for-
est with antibiotics is a poor choice, but what
else are we supposed to do?
Eat kimchi and cross our fingers?
For now, [checks notes] yes. But in a
few years, everything is going to change.
“There’s been a lot of interest in manipu-
lating the microbiome to help with disease,
and there are probably close to 100 biotech
companies that have initiated programs
to exploit this space,” says Ramnik Xavier,
codirector of the Infectious Disease and
Microbiome Program at the Broad Institute
of MIT and Harvard. Xavier says pharma
companies are trying four approaches
simultaneously: replacing natural microbial
communities that are screwed up in such
conditions as inflammatory bowel disease;
killing or removing hyperspecific species of
bacteria, such as antibiotic-resistant MRSA;
synthetically engineering bacteria to deliver
whatever is missing or changed in a person’s
microbiome; or replacing molecules that
scientists have learned gut bacteria make
that modulate the brain or immune system.
Establishing these drug platforms will
be one of the first powerful steps toward
eradicating some of the major Western
lifestyle diseases, like diabetes and cardio-
vascular disease, limited only by how muchDozens of biotech companies are targeting your
microbiome to create a whole new class of drugs.we can learn about the bacterial mech-
anisms that inf luence each condition.
“Obviously the challenge is going to be
to understand the biology behind these
diseases rather than rushing to find a short-
term fix,” says Xavier. “But I think it’s going
to have a huge impact.”
Leading the way is a new biotech com-
pany out of Denmark called Snipr Biome,
which just raised $50 million in a Series A
to use Crispr—that real-time gene-editing
technology that a Chinese scientist was
recently using to manipulate embryos—to
take out disease-causing species of bacte-
ria like a sniper (or a snipper, depending
on your sensibilities and skill at Wheel of
Fortune). “It sounds very futuristic, and it
is very elegant,” says Christian Grøndahl,
Snipr’s CEO. “It doesn’t necessarily haveto take that long. We think we could make
it into the first clinical trials in two years.”
Xav ier believes the first treatments in the
microbiome space will likely fight Clostrid-
ium difficile infections—bacterial stomach
disease that can gain a foothold during over-
use of antibiotics, affecting half a million
Americans every year. Previously, doctors
discovered they could fight C. diff by recon-
stituting patients’ microbiomes through
fecal transplants—essentially, natural
microbiome pills made of poop.
Poop pills were a monumental advance
in digestive medicine, but they’re nothing
compared to what’s next.The Biggest Thing
Since Penicillin