Photo Credit: Jennifer Oosthuizen
The following is a summary of “Rational design of live biotherapeutic products for the prevention of Clostridioides difficile infection,” published in the September 2024 issue of Infectious Disease by Ke et al.
A significant reason for healthcare- and antibiotic-associated diarrhea is Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI).
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to evaluate the mechanisms and long-term safety of fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) for recurrent CDI.
They used a computational pipeline and 3 metagenomic datasets to identify microbial strains for live biotherapeutic products (LBPs), which utilize pre-defined bacterial consortia targeting CDI. This effort resulted in constructing a CDI-related microbial genome catalog comprising 3,741 non-redundant metagenome-assembled genomes (nrMAGs).
The results showed the identification of several potential protective nrMAGs, including strains from Dorea formicigenerans, Oscillibacter welbionis, and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii. Notably, some of these protective nrMAGs were identified as having a significant role in the success of FMT, and the majority of the leading protective nrMAGs were corroborated by prior studies.
They concluded the results provided a framework for selecting microbial strains targeting CDI, facilitating the computational design of LBPs for other enteric infections.
Source: academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiae470/7774035
