DEVELOPING THE NEXT GENERATION OF MEDICINES THAT TARGET AND ENHANCE THE MICROBIOME Groundwork laid for a future of cultured microbiome therapies targeting specific diseases
INTERVIEW
Associate Professor Sam Forster, CSL Centenary Fellow, Research Group Head
Microbiota and Systems Biology, Hudson Institute of Medical Research
& Team Leader, Australian Microbiome Culture Collection
& Chief Scientific Officer, BiomeBank
Dr Sam Costello,
Co-founder & CEO
BiomeBank
SEGMENT
Filmed in Melbourne and Adelaide | December 2024
Australian Health Journal spoke to Associate Professor Sam Forster, Research Group Head, Microbiota and Systems Biology, Hudson Institute of Medical Research, Team Leader, Australian Microbiome Culture Collection & Chief Scientific Officer, BiomeBank and Dr Sam Costello, Co-Founder and CEO of BiomeBank about the microbiome, partnering and some of the breakthroughs in recent years.
Assoc Prof Forster describes the role of the microbiome, “Every one of us carries thousands of bacteria. Millions of individual cells, and they’re intimately associated with all sorts of sites on our bodies. So our gut is the most common place we think about, but our lungs, our skin, everywhere. Where there’s an interface, the external environment, there’s bacteria and other microbes that actually enable us to interface with the external world. They detect changes and they regulate our immune response.”
This can be really important from a health perspective because they indicate when things are going well, we should have a healthy state or something’s gone wrong, and there is an inflammatory response. This can then be detrimental, or it can help clear a particular condition.
“The microbes we carry are intimately associated with our health.”, says Assoc Prof Forster. He was the founder of the Australian Microbiome Culture Collection at Hudson that now contains over 40,000 bacterial isolates. This provides a resource for further research.
“All of these opportunities are available because we have this vast collection of microbes where we can say this particular combination for you is relevant for this experiment. Taking clinical samples, we then can replicate the host environment using microfluidic organ on-a-chip systems”, says Assoc Prof Forster.
Microbiome therapies involve modifying the body’s microbial communities to improve health. These treatments aim to restore balance to the microbiome, potentially alleviating conditions like inflammatory bowel disease, liver disorders, autoimmune diseases, and certain cancers.
The Hudson Institute of Medical Research and BiomeBank have partnered to advance microbiome-based therapeutics. Their collaboration focuses on identifying key bacteria involved in disease onset and resolution, particularly associated with the gut. By combining their expertise, they aim to develop targeted microbial therapies to treat and prevent diseases by restoring gut microbial ecology.
BiomeBank develops and delivers microbiome therapies. In 2022 BiomeBank was successful in introducing the world’s first approved donor derived microbiome therapy approved in Australia for the treatment of C. Difficile infection.
Through this collaboration, the Hudson Institute and BiomeBank are at the forefront of microbiome research, striving to translate scientific discoveries into effective therapies that can improve patient outcomes.
As Dr Costello states, “We see microbiome therapies evolving in the next few years from predominantly donor derived therapies that are harvested from screened healthy stool donors, towards cultured therapies that can be grown in bioreactors and produced under controlled conditions.”
Assoc Prof Forster has been involved in a number of breakthroughs in culturing previously thought to be unculturable organisms.
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Australia’s Nursing Crisis Snapshot
“Nursing, already under pressure, is reaching breaking point due to the pressures of COVID-19 and a disjointed healthcare system, including the acute, primary and aged care sectors”, says Kylie Ward, Australian College of Nursing CEO adding, “We must act now to protect our nurses and healthcare; the time has come for a national reckoning on nursing in Australia.”
Australian nurses cannot continue to work under the extreme pressure they are currently operating under – the impacts are mounting.
The almost 400,000 Australian nurses are a constant presence in every one of our major life milestones, national emergencies and global crises. The nurse of today holds a science degree, possesses highly technical training, valuable medical opinions, front-row expertise, is an effective trainer, and is skilled in population and systemic thinking. But the pandemic is inflicting a major emotional and physical toll on nurses.
In this “Perspectives” special, Australian Health Journal spoke with 4 nurses on the challenges they or nurses in their circle have experienced, the key issues as well some of the opportunities. These nurses come from national leadership & policy, large scale workforce management, a final year student completing over a year on placement across 6 Melbourne Hospitals and a NSW based ICU nurse stranded in Mexico, unable to return to a critical role in nursing to an already strained team due to incoming quotas.
While the issues are challenging, there are strategies that can be put into place to ease the pressure, to support nurses, and nursing care in Australia. These are discussed by the the 4 nurses.
– Adjunct Professor Kylie Ward FACN CEO, Australian College of Nursing
– Adjunct Professor Alanna Geary FACN ACN Chair of Workforce Sustainability Policy Chapter & Chief Nursing & Midwifery Officer, Metro North Health
– Natalie Reyes, NSW based ICU Nurse Currently stranded in Mexico
– Hayley Pollock, Final Year Bachelor of Nursing Student & ACN Emerging Nurse Leader
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Maximising benefits, minimising harms in population health screening
Population screening is an important contributor to advancing health outcomes through the early detection of and successful intervention for chronic disease. The evolution of science, technology and evidence relating to diseases which are or may be amenable to a population screening approach deserve broad discussion and the sharing of expertise and evidence. They also warrant close scrutiny in context of health policy and health resource allocation considerations.
In March, Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) convened Screening Conference Conference 2025 with the theme of ‘Population Screening for Chronic Disease – Maximising Benefits, Minimising Harms’.
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New research papers show productivity gains and gaps
Commissioner Catherine De Fontenay talks about the Productivity Commission’s new approach to analysing health productivity, shifting the perspective from the unit measurement of individuals using the health system to the actual improvement of health. This has shown Australia’s health treatment productivity is improving, but identifies gaps in preventative health measures and duplication, where digital technology needs to be more effectively used.
