Strategies to Facilitate Translational Advances from Microbiome Surveys

Amy D Willis; Samuel S Minot

doi:10.1016/j.tim.2020.02.002

Strategies to Facilitate Translational Advances from Microbiome Surveys

Trends Microbiol. 2020 May;28(5):329-330. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2020.02.002. Epub 2020 Mar 4.

Authors

Amy D Willis¹, Samuel S Minot²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
² Microbiome Research Initiative, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].

Abstract

Manipulating the microbiome has enormous potential to treat important human diseases. Microbiome surveys are often used to identify potential therapeutic targets by finding associations between microbial elements and disease status. We argue that many reported associations between the microbiome and disease are incompatible with translational research because they are insufficiently specific. We encourage the clear specification of manipulable microbial elements that can be tested in follow-up randomized experiments, and we provide multiple examples of specific and nonspecific microbial elements.

Keywords: microbiome; reproducibility; scientific method; translational science.

MeSH terms

Bacteria / drug effects
Bacterial Infections / drug therapy
Bacterial Infections / microbiology
Bacterial Infections / pathology
Bacterial Physiological Phenomena*
Humans
Microbiota / physiology*
Translational Research, Biomedical / methods*

Grants and funding

R35 GM133420/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/United States