For more information:
Email UsMicrobiome in Human Health and Disease
The objective of this RFA was to solicit proposals that will promote a greater understanding of the role(s) microbiomes play in the maintenance of normal human physiology and in the manifestation and treatment of human disease. For this opportunity, the microbiome encompassed viruses, bacteria, and fungi as they relate to human physiology and/or illness. There was no restriction on the area of human health to be investigated in the proposal. Applicants were encouraged to think broadly about the interactions between microbiomes and human physiology and ecology in formulating their proposals.
Five pilot grants were awarded in amounts up to $50,000 for each one-year project starting June 1, 2019
Sponsoring Program
Awardees
Principal Investigator: Georg Gerber, MD PhD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile), a bacterium, is the most common cause of infection in U.S. hospitals and is responsible for ~500,000 cases of severe diarrhea and ~15,000 deaths annually. Treatment for the infection is initially ineffective in ~25% of patients, leading to unnecessary sickness and costs to the healthcare system of ~$2.8 billion. There is a need for a diagnostic test for infection recurrence risk which is based on measurements of the microbiome. This project proposes developing a microbiome-based diagnostic test for (C. difficile) recurrence using machine learning.
Principal Investigator: Kate Jeffrey, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital
Humans evolved with, and continue to harbor, trillions of microorganisms living inside our digestive and respiratory tracts, and coating our skin. The last 20 years of research has focused almost exclusively on our symbiotic bacteria. This work has revealed the important contribution of alterations in the composition of our gut bacteria in many immune disorders, especially inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Large-scale sequencing or “metagenomics” have enabled identification of the important contribution of viruses to the microbial communities that inhabit the healthy intestine, the “virome”. How the virome contributes to a healthy gut is almost completely unknown this project proposes to identify the dominant components of the intestinal virome that are recognized by our immune system.
Principal Investigator: Caroline Mitchell, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital
In the female reproductive tract, having healthy bacteria in the vagina is associated with better pregnancy outcomes. Recent work suggests that bacteria colonize the uterine cavity and may be associated with a woman’s chances of conceiving a pregnancy. However, which bacteria promote pregnancy has not been well characterized. We propose a comparison of two groups of women using in vitro fertilization (IVF) to achieve pregnancy. Our healthy control group includes women in a same sex partnership, or where the male partner is the source of infertility. Our case group is women with unexplained infertility. We will compare vaginal bacteria, uterine bacteria and gut bacteria between the two groups of fertility patients to see if women with unexplained infertility have different bacteria from healthy women.
Principal Investigator: Victor Neel, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital
The abstract for this grant award has not been published at the request of the Principal Investigator.
Principal Investigator: George Whitesides, PhD, Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences
The abstract for this grant award has not been published at the request of the Principal Investigator.