Community organizers

With new papers published by the day and a flurry of big-dollar deals and financings, it's hard to separate the signal from the noise in the microbiome space. The space has become so hot that companies developing products that relate in any way to bacteria, including some OTC probiotics and anti-infectives, have adopted the microbiome label.

Two very interesting approaches driven by new insights into the microbiome as a whole involve mimicking or modifying these microbial communities, either by using bugs themselves as drugs, or by developing traditional therapeutics that reproduce the function of the microbiome...