Eu­ro­pean play­ers set up one-stop bac­te­r­i­al strain shop for mi­cro­bio­me-fo­cused drug de­vel­op­ers

The fer­tile mi­cro­bio­me field is gath­er­ing more steam in Eu­rope. Swiss phar­ma con­tract man­u­fac­tur­er Lon­za is join­ing forces with Den­mark’s bio­science firm Chr Hansen in a joint ven­ture, en­gi­neered to en­able a sup­ply chain for ‘good’ bac­te­r­i­al strains tai­lored for ther­a­peu­tic use.

Mi­cro­bio­me-based ther­a­peu­tics to­day is a fe­cund field for drug de­vel­op­ers — big and small — cap­i­tal­iz­ing on sci­ence that sug­gests flush­ing ‘good’ gut bac­te­ria in­to the sys­tem can treat a pletho­ra of con­di­tions — from C. diff in­fec­tion to obe­si­ty — us­ing dif­fer­ent ther­a­peu­tic modal­i­ties, some of which are de­signed to side­step the “ick” fac­tor as­so­ci­at­ed with tra­di­tion­al stool trans­fer or fe­cal mi­cro­bio­ta trans­plan­ta­tion (FMT).

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