Grant: Project Grant

Diet is a key factor in obesity. Many Canadians are overweight or obese and have a higher risk of metabolic diseases such as fatty liver disease or type 2 diabetes. Sticking to a diet to prevent or reverse obesity is very hard. This is an urgent health problem. Obesity and increased blood glucose link many metabolic diseases together and increase the risk of early sickness and early death. The food we eat works together with the bacteria in our gut to change blood glucose and the risk of metabolic diseases. The microbiota is the community of bacteria that live on (and in) us. Nearly all microbiota research tries to find out what goes wrong with bacteria during an obesity-causing diet and metabolic disease by measuring the names of bacteria in the gut. The aim has been to identify new bacteria and then develop a new beneficial live bacterium (i.e., probiotic) or compound that alters many live bacteria in a beneficial way (i.e., prebiotic). We have taken a different approach and discovered that "postbiotics" can alter metabolic disease and blood glucose. Postbiotics are dead parts of bacteria. Many bacteria have evolved ways to thrive alongside our immune system. Understanding how bacteria work with our immune system to change metabolism allowed us to discover 3 postbiotics that improve blood glucose during diet-induced obesity. Each of these postbiotics uniquely alters immunity and has a short-term or long-term effect on blood glucose in obese mice. We aim to understand how to best combine these postbiotics to improve metabolic disease. Probiotics need to fight bacteria that are already in the gut to find a spot to live. Prebiotics have a widespread effect on many bacteria that are not specific. Our postbiotics overcome these limitations and do not require live bacteria to alter metabolism. We will now figure out how 3 new postbiotics work together, so we can develop better ways to use bacteria to combat metabolic diseases.