The Development of Live Biotherapeutics

The advances of next generation sequencing have broadened our understanding of microbial ecology and the host-microbe relationship. This combined with the rapid accessibility of bioinformatic and omics based tools is providing a new opportunity to design novel live biotherapeutic (LBP) applications to predict and manipulate microbial community structure and function so as to promote a healthy microbial ecosystem at the level of a single organism, community or the larger host-microbe interface. The improved probability of success with LBP applications requires the integration of genomic standards, translatability of bioinformatic pipelines, and the acceleration of lead optimization processes. This will translate into safer and more effective clinical applications for the prevention and treatment of disease.