Grant: CIHR Fellowship - PA: PPHE Research - Priority Areas

Within the gut of every individual are helpful bacteria that support the function of our bodies, including a prominent impact on the development and function of our immune system. These bacteria, along with fungi, are called the microbiome. Normally, the microbiome exists in a healthy balance in the gut, but this balance can be disrupted by illness and treatments like antibiotics - which is called dysbiosis. Gut dysbiosis can manifest as a loss of helpful bacteria, or through an overgrowth of harmful bacteria (or both). Gut microbiome dysbiosis is particularly evident and severe in people suffering from critical illness in intensive care units (ICU). A major impact of gut microbiome dysbiosis in ICU patients is its impact on immune functions that protect against infections, leading to a high risk of deadly hospital-acquired infections. There is great potential to use microbial based therapeutics to correct this gut dysbiosis, but a current barrier to this potentially transformative therapy is that we lack a method to rapidly test a patients microbiome for the presence of dysbiosis (current microbiome testing takes weeks, is very expensive, and not feasible for individual patient analysis). Therefore, in this study we seek to develop a rapid, cost-effective point-of-care microbiome analysis method that will make the application of microbial therapeutics a reality for vulnerable ICU patients (and many others with dysbiosis-related diseases).