Drug Developers Urged to Adopt Humans as Superorganism Approach

A recent review article summarized more than 100 studies relating to the concept that humans are actually “superorganisms” composed of many varieties of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells.

Most drug development activities have been conducted within a framework that links a single drug with its critical receptor target. However, this approach may change due to increasing interest in understanding the properties of traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) for their potential utilization as a source of new drugs, since emerging evidence indicates that most TCM drugs are actually targeting both the human host and many of its symbiotic microbes.

Chinese medicine traditionally viewed humans as “superorganisms” comprised of only about 10% human cells with the other 90% of the body being composed of bacterial, fungal, and other cells. These symbiotic microorganisms release molecular signals that can determine whether human genes turn on or off and that can influence the immune system's defenses against disease.

To better understand the superorganism concept investigators at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Shanghai, China) reviewed more than 100 studies related to this topic in a paper that was published in the July 6, 2012, issue of the Journal of Proteome Research. In this review, they explored the challenges of and opportunities for harmonizing Eastern–Western drug discovery paradigms by focusing on emergent functions at the whole body level of humans as superorganisms.

“This superorganism view of the human body provides a complete new systems concept for managing human health at the clinically relevant whole body level,” said the authors. “It is one of the most significant paradigm shifts in modern medicine."

The review described how this revolutionary change is fostering emergence of an approach called "functional metagenomics" for developing new medicines. This could lead to new drug candidate compounds for chronic diseases targeting receptors outside the currently accepted “druggable genome” and shed light on current high interest issues in Western medicine such as drug-drug and drug-diet-gut microbial interactions that will be crucial in the development and delivery of future therapeutic regimes optimized for the individual patient.

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Shanghai Jiao Tong University