New Interdisciplinary Research Center Targets the Microbiome

By LabMedica International staff writers
Posted on 20 Nov 2014

An interdisciplinary research center has been established to promote studies on the microbiome, the many communities of microorganisms living within the human body, and its relation to human health and disease.

The Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics (CMIT) is a New England (USA) regional center to advance the science of the human microbiome and the treatment of conditions and diseases associated with an altered microbiome. Located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, USA), with co-directors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, USA), the center is dedicated to fostering and supporting a research ecosystem involving the participation of hospitals, other universities, and research institutes in the region. The center is being launched with an initial 25 million USD expendable budget over five years, and the first requests for proposals will be released in January 2015.

Image: Clostridium difficile (shown here) is a bacterium in the intestines that has been successfully treated through microbiome manipulation (Photo courtesy of the CDC - [US] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

The center has three core functions: to advance the field by funding research proposals; to help individual research projects proceed more efficiently through shared services, such as a regional sample facility or support for regulatory compliance; and to draw new talent to microbiome research by promoting the field within the academic community. The center focuses on supporting the intersection of research, clinical practice, computational biology, and engineering.

One of the center co-directors, Dr. Ramnik Xavier, chief of gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital, said, “Molecular biologists, microbiologists, and cell biologists seek to understand microbe/microbe and microbe/host cell function and communication. Immunologists, geneticists, and genomics researchers drive progress. To this wealth of information, clinicians contribute patient-based insights and gain potential targets for therapeutics. We want this center to be a convening hub for strengths that are distributed across disciplines and throughout different institutions in the New England region.”

Related Links:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts General Hospital