Project Overview
The Rutgers University Microbiome Program
Harnessing microbiomes to improve human health
Despite 20th-century medical breakthroughs, many diseases have increased alarmingly, including obesity, diabetes, asthma, allergies, autism, and autoimmune diseases, with causes unknown and cures unavailable. Now, it is clear that our microbiome, the group of diverse microorganisms that lives in and on us, plays a critical role in our health, affecting metabolism, immunity, and even our brains. In short, a healthy microbiome keeps us healthy. We now know that, with urbanization, we have lost diversity of our microbiome. The gut microbiota of patients often teems with pathogens, which may drive or aggravate illness. Our hypothesis is that we have lost some of the beneficial strains whose functions are essential in keeping us healthy.
What if you could know which beneficial strains are missing and how you are predisposed to particular diseases? What if you could adjust your microbial makeup to its healthiest composition by taking personalized treatments? The Rutgers University Microbiome Program aims to address such questions by examining microbiome roles in human health. The program will position Rutgers as a health-oriented and globally recognized center of excellence in microbiome research: basic, translational, and clinical. Through the program, we will promote preservation of microbiome diversity globally, develop novel solutions for restoring and maintaining healthy microbiota, train students to be the next generation of physicians and scientists in microbiome research, and accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries to products and practices that improve human health. The program will target broadly, including microbiomes in soil, plants, animals, and the environment, which also are experiencing serious diversity loss. Finally, the program will serve as an engine for economic development across New Jersey.
Download the brochure Past & Upcoming Events
Listen to the Advance Rutgers podcast episode: Our Changing Microbiome
Our human microbiome helps us do so many things, like digesting our food, train our immune system, and protect against illness. But modern-day practices are changing our microbiome and potentially increasing our risk for disease. This episode of the Advance Rutgers podcast is part one of a two-part microbiome mini-series. It features Dr. Martin Blaser, Henry Rutgers Chair of the Human Microbiome and professor of medicine and pathology, and Professor Gloria Dominguez-Bello, Henry Rutgers Professor of Microbiome and Health, who are co-founders (along with Professor Liping Zhao) of the Rutgers University Microbiome Program. They shed light on why our microbiome is changing, the impacts of that change, and how the Rutgers University Microbiome Program will help people understand the role of microbes in improving health—specifically the health of our children.
Visit our website to learn about more signature initiatives taking place at Rutgers and how you can support them.
Read the Podcast Transcript
Christine Fennessy:
Welcome to Advance Rutgers, a podcast about the many ways that Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, is addressing the critical issues of our day. At Rutgers, we believe a better tomorrow starts with bigger thinking today. Our talented and driven community is improving the human condition with transformative, multidisciplinary projects. This podcast will explore those groundbreaking initiatives: what they are, why they matter, and who they benefit.
Today’s episode is Part One in a two-part series about the Rutgers University Microbiome Program. It features Dr. Martin Blaser and Professor Gloria Dominguez-Bello. They’re co-founders and co-leaders of the program. They help us understand what our microbiome does for us, why it’s changing, and the impact that change is having on our health — specifically on the health of kids.
The second episode in this two-part series will feature the Rutgers University Microbiome Program’s third co-founder, Professor Liping Zhao. He’ll explain the importance of dietary fiber in maintaining a healthy gut microbiome and what you can do to improve your own nutrition. Thanks for joining us.
Dr. Martin Blaser started looking at antibiotic resistance decades ago, when he was working as an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control. At that time, he learned that antibiotics were primarily used not in human medicine, but in agriculture.
Marty Blaser:
Seventy years ago, farmers discovered that if they fed antibiotics to their livestock, they would grow bigger and faster.
Christine Fennessy:
It worked for chickens, cows, pigs. And the earlier in life farmers started the antibiotics, the bigger the effect. One day, Dr. Blaser was talking to a student about obesity.
Marty Blaser:
I said, “Well, farmers feed antibiotics to their farm animals to fatten them up. And just as I’m saying that, a light bulb went off in my mind and I thought to myself: Well, I wonder if that’s what we’re doing to our kids — that by giving our kids antibiotics early in life, we’re fattening them up also. That was almost 20 years ago, and I’ve been working on this problem ever since.
Christine Fennessy:
That problem: the relationship between the human microbiome and diseases like asthma, diabetes, and obesity. Today, Dr. Blaser is one of the founders of the Rutgers University Microbiome Program and…
Marty Blaser:
I’m a professor of medicine and pathology and laboratory medicine at RWJ Medical School at Rutgers. I’m also the director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers.
Christine Fennessy:
And for those who might not know, RWJ stands for Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. But what is a microbiome? It’s the collection of microbes that live on or inside us. And microbes are the smallest living things and the oldest form of life on earth.
Marty Blaser:
Bacteria got here first, and every plant and animal that evolved on Earth had to take microbes into account.
Christine Fennessy:
Which means every organism has a microbiome: animals, plants, humans. Soil has a microbiome. So does air, the oceans, forests, even cities have their own microbiome. And in our bodies, we have distinct microbiomes: on our skin, in our mouth, in our gut. To date, researchers know the most about our gut microbiome, because it’s been studied the most. But what do all these microbes do for us? Dr. Blaser says we live in cooperation and sometimes in conflict with them. And our understanding of microbes has evolved over time.
Marty Blaser:
What happened is that it became clear that many of the important illnesses of humans were due to microbes, like tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, and smallpox, and we can go on and on. And so, microbes got a bad name. Everybody thinks of them as germs.
Christine Fennessy:
He says there definitely are bad microbes.
Marty Blaser:
But the overwhelming number of microbes in the world are either neutral to humans or beneficial.
Christine Fennessy:
For example, he says, our human microbiome…
Marty Blaser:
…helps us digest our food. It makes vitamins for us. It trains our immune system. It offers a line of protection against invaders.
Christine Fennessy:
So the healthier our microbiome is, the healthier we are. And a healthy microbiome needs a huge range of microbes. That diversity gives our system redundancy. If a lot of microbes can do the same thing, like protect us from invaders, we can afford to lose some. Say, if we take an antibiotic that kills a particular bacterium off. Diversity equals stability. But that diversity? It’s disappearing. To Dr. Blaser, this loss is an existential issue, like climate change.
Marty Blaser:
Climate change, we could say, is humanity’s activities that are affecting our macro-ecology. But I think that we’re doing the same kind of damage to our micro-ecology. But it’s only become obvious more recently.
Christine Fennessy:
He says there’s more and more evidence that we’re losing our microbial diversity. And that extinction, as he calls it, may be contributing to diseases like asthma, diabetes, and obesity. But what’s causing this decline in microbial diversity? Dr. Blaser says there are many factors, and they can begin at birth.
Marty Blaser:
If we don’t have the right organisms to start with, we’re at a deficit.
Christine Fennessy:
We first acquire our microbiome inside the birth canal.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
When the mother breaks waters and the baby starts its way out through the birth canal, unfortunately for women, it takes hours where the baby’s exposed to this microbiota of the mother, swallowing it, getting it in the skin, in the nose, everywhere.
Christine Fennessy:
That’s Professor Dominguez-Bello.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
My name is Gloria Dominguez-Bello. I’m a Henry Rutgers Professor for Microbiome and Health. I’m also the director of the Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers.
Christine Fennessy:
Among many other things, Professor Dominguez-Bello researches microbiome development from birth. She says that when babies are born vaginally, they’re heavily inoculated with the bacteria that colonizes the birth canal. But babies born via a scheduled C-section are not.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
When a baby’s born by a scheduled C-section — I have to clarify. Because if it’s an emergency C-section with labor, the baby has been exposed, the baby’s born colonized. But if the C-section is scheduled, the doctors have to break the sac, suck the water, and then take the baby out. That baby’s sterile.
Christine Fennessy:
Meaning it missed out on its first exposure: the natural transmission of microbes from mother to baby from the birth canal.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
The first exposure is to the air of the operating room, which is loaded with skin flakes, microscopic skin flakes, which have skin bacteria.
Christine Fennessy:
C-sections affect a baby’s microbiome in other ways, too. Because it’s a surgery, it exposes the child to antibiotics. (More on antibiotics in a minute.) Scheduled C-sections also delay breast milk production. And breast milk not only feeds the baby…
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
It also has indigestible components like fibers. Milk fibers, I call them.
Christine Fennessy:
These fibers, called human milk oligosaccharides, feed bacteria in the baby’s colon. So among many other things, breast milk is also food for the microbiome. But with a scheduled C-section, the mother’s body doesn’t immediately know that the baby’s been born.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
The body needs to learn that the baby’s out and then start preparing the breast and all that. So it takes about 24 hours for the mom to produce milk.
Christine Fennessy:
She says most mothers don’t want to wait that long to feed their newborn. So they give the baby formula, which she says can affect its microbiome and impair latching of the baby to the breast.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
So C-section, in general, impairs lactation, makes it more difficult, and makes mothers give up and bottle-feed formula.
Christine Fennessy:
So babies miss out on the microbial bath they get in the birth canal, get exposed to antibiotics, and may end up being formula-fed. And that’s why kids born via scheduled C-section start life at a deficit when it comes to those good microbes.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
So it’s a complex intervention that greatly alters the first microbiota that a baby gets.
Christine Fennessy:
Both Professor Dominguez-Bello and Dr. Blaser, who are married, say C-sections and formula feeding are two significant factors contributing to the decline in microbial diversity. Other factors include chlorinated water, excessive use of antimicrobials, eating a low-fiber diet, and antibiotics — especially when these drugs are used early in life. Dr. Blaser says that’s because our microbiome forms when we’re very young.
Marty Blaser:
And by the age of three or so, it largely has an adult profile. So those first three years of life are really the most critical time for the development of the microbiome.
Christine Fennessy:
Antibiotics can wipe out or suppress beneficial microbes or cause harmful microbes to proliferate. And he says anything that perturbs the microbiome is going to have an ill effect.
Marty Blaser:
The altered microbiome is not in the same kind of partnership that the normal microbiome should be. Remember, the microbiome instructs our immune system.
Christine Fennessy:
So if our microbiome is out of whack, our immune system will be, too. Which can have profound implications when it comes to the development of disease.
Marty Blaser:
If a person gets a disease when they’re five years old or 10 or 20 years old, the question is: When did it actually start?
Christine Fennessy:
He says, for example, we know an important precursor for adult obesity is childhood obesity or a child who’s overweight.
Marty Blaser :
So the roots of many of our really important diseases begin early in childhood.
Christine Fennessy:
So if a kid’s microbiome gets perturbed by, say a scheduled C-section or too many antibiotics early in life, the microbiome gets knocked off its normal course of development. And because the microbiome instructs the child’s immune system, the immune system gets what professor Dominguez-Bello calls a bad education. It overreacts to things that aren’t real threats and that causes inflammation.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
And the underlying thing behind asthma, obesity, Type 1 diabetes, allergies — there is one thing that is underlying them all. And that is inflammation. Inflammation is an excessive response of the immune system.
Christine Fennessy:
She says that inflammation can cause a vicious cycle, because it can harm the lining of organs, like our mouth and gut, opening them up to bacteria, which causes even more inflammation.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
So it’s a chronic state of high inflammation, which is very bad for health.
Christine Fennessy:
“Very bad,” because that chronic inflammation eventually leads to chronic disease.
So when it comes to antibiotics, how much do young kids typically get? Dr. Blaser says, according to the Centers for Disease Control, on average, by the time a child is two, they’ve had nearly three courses. By the time they’re 10, they’ve had 10 courses.
Marty Blaser:
So the exposure is enormous. Now, we’ve known for a long time that we are overusing antibiotics. But no one really put a stop to it, because they thought, “Well, it might not help, but it won’t hurt you.” But there’s increasing evidence that it will hurt.
Christine Fennessy:
He says studies have found associations between antibiotic exposure in the first two years of a kid’s life and disorders like asthma, allergies, obesity, and autism.
Marty Blaser:
The question that always comes up is, “Yes, you have shown an association between A and B. But does A really cause B?”
Christine Fennessy:
To answer that question, his lab does experiments on mice. They take two groups of animals identical in every way, except one group gets antibiotics. Dr. Blaser and his colleagues have found that mice given antibiotics had more body fat, decreased immunity, and more food allergies. For kids born via scheduled C-section, Professor Dominguez-Bello says it’s a similar situation. Observational studies have found higher rates of diseases, like asthma and Type 1 diabetes, in children born via C-section.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
These are associations. We can’t say that C-sections and formula cause the disease, because all we are doing is making a correlation.
Christine Fennessy:
So again, researchers turn to the mice.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
We have germ-free animals. So if you have a germ-free animal, you can give them human microbes. And then you can use the animal to inform you which human microbes are pro-inflammatory, are making the disease worse, or which ones protect.
Christine Fennessy:
She says if a microbe is anti-inflammatory in humans, it’s likely to be anti-inflammatory in mice. Once they know what type of microbe does what, they can ask questions like: Did the child have low levels of this protective microbe before the onset of disease? Or, did the child have high levels of the microbe that increases the disease risk?
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
So those kinds of studies which are showing causation are extremely important, because we can really learn which kinds of microbes cause the disease or protect.
Christine Fennessy:
Professor Dominguez-Bello has also studied the potential for restoring the microbiome in babies born via scheduled C-section. It’s called vaginal seeding. And just a quick heads up, if you’re at all squeamish or listening with kids, we’re going to get a little detailed over the next 30 seconds or so.
They put gauze inside a tampon and inserted it into the mother’s vaginal canal for one hour before birth. After the baby was delivered, they swabbed its mouth, face, and body.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
We gave the babies born by C-section vaginal fluids of their mothers, and then followed those babies for a year and studied their microbiome.
Christine Fennessy:
They wanted to know if they could restore the microbes the baby would’ve gotten in a vaginal birth. And…
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
Are we making the microbiome more normal, closer to babies born vaginally? And the answer was yes.
Christine Fennessy:
Closer to normal, yes. Not a hundred percent. That might be, she says, because the babies were exposed to antibiotics as part of the surgery. And just to be clear, vaginal seeding is not a standard practice.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
The FDA actually is treating this like a new drug for newborns. And they have asked us to repeat the tests the week of the C-section, again, so that we are sure that what we are applying on the baby doesn’t cause any harm. So far, no babies — neither restored or non-restored — have had any problems, but we will continue doing the study.
Christine Fennessy:
She says the next step is a randomized clinical trial with a five-year, follow-up period to see what effect, if any, vaginal seeding has on the health of the kids.
So, scheduled C-sections and early antibiotic use are decreasing a child’s microbial diversity and perhaps increasing their risk for chronic disease. What can a parent do? First, if you do have a scheduled C-section, Professor Dominguez-Bello says breast milk can help normalize your baby’s microbiome.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
Breastfeeding is a great help. Breastfeeding is a good restorer. If a mom has to have a C-section and cannot breastfeed, can she get human milk and give human milk to that baby? At least that’s closer to the most natural.
Christine Fennessy:
She says, of course, lots of kisses and hugs will help transfer all those good microbes too. She also recommends waiting on giving real food until your baby has developed the motor skills to put something to its mouth.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
When I had my daughter 30 years ago, I was told that I should give her soup at four months. I realize now that’s force-feeding a baby. That baby is not ready. It’s not asking.
Christine Fennessy:
When it comes to antibiotics. Dr. Blaser says, there’s no question they are miraculous drugs. But they come with a cost, so they must be considered carefully.
Marty Blaser:
And the purpose of the doctor is not to give you an antibiotic. The purpose of going to the doctor is for the doctor to do a careful examination and say, “Your illness is severe. You need an antibiotic.” Or, “Your illness is mild. You do not need an antibiotic.”
Christine Fennessy:
He applies the same approach to his own health.
Marty Blaser:
I try to take antibiotics only when necessary. I try to take the shortest course of antibiotics and the lowest dose that I need to take, because all of the effects are dose-related.
Christine Fennessy:
It’s important to note here: This is research. It’s not meant to judge or shame. There are so many reasons why women have to have or choose to have C-sections. And the same goes for formula feeding and antibiotics. Researchers like Professor Dominguez-Bello and Dr. Blaser are not shaming parents for their choices. They’re trying to learn from them, so that one day all kids get the best possible start to a healthy life. Ultimately, researchers like Dr. Blaser and Professor Dominguez-Bello want to know if a degraded microbiome can be restored — if good, health-promoting microbes that are absent or have been wiped out can be brought back.
Dr. Blaser has studied the potential for restoration in mice. His team showed that if they gave the animals antibiotics, they could accelerate the rate at which the mice developed Type 1 diabetes.
Marty Blaser:
We’ve also shown that we can reverse it by giving back poop from moms, and we can bring them back to their baseline. So, this is some evidence that we can actually restore.
Christine Fennessy:
He says the goal is to develop similar methods that could work in humans.
Marty Blaser:
It could be that in the future, every time someone takes an antibiotic, maybe they’ve been storing their poop or somebody’s been storing their poop for them. And they’ll get that poop back, for example.
Christine Fennessy:
That poop would be what he calls “normal,” meaning a sample taken from the person before that person was ever exposed to antibiotics. And that sample would restore the good microbes that were wiped out or suppressed by the drugs.
Marty Blaser:
Or maybe it won’t be poop, but we’ll know: What are the key organisms in the poop for that person? And the doctor of the future will reach on to their shelf and take out those organisms. Those are what we might call probiotics.
Christine Fennessy:
But doctors can’t reach for those key organisms if they no longer exist. And that’s why Dr. Blaser and Professor Dominguez-Bello are so worried about the decline of microbial diversity. We could be losing some of our best medicine. Collecting, preserving, and studying that microbial medicine will be part of the mission of the Rutgers University Microbiome Program, also known as RUMP.
Marty Blaser:
It’s a little facetious, but people remember the name.
Christine Fennessy:
The program will focus on research, education, clinical care, technology transfer, community outreach. And it will also focus on sustainability and conservation. Because according to Professor Dominguez-Bello, the greatest microbial diversity is found in traditional hunter-gatherer societies. She and her team have found that the more urban you are, the lower the microbial diversity, especially in your gut.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
When we compare U.S. people to people in the Amazon that have very little contact with Westerners, we have half of their diversity.
Christine Fennessy:
Westerners also have more chronic diseases. But urbanization is coming [to other areas of the world], she says. And as these societies integrate into urban areas with their C-sections, antibiotics, antimicrobials, and processed food diets, we may lose that diversity forever.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
So we started an initiative, called the Microbiota Vault, to preserve microbiomes — human and environmental microbiomes that are important for humanity.
Christine Fennessy:
Her inspiration for the initiative came from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. It’s a long-term seed storage facility for every important crop on Earth. It’s an insurance policy of sorts for the world’s food supply. The Microbiota Vault will gather and preserve microbes from communities still untouched by urbanization. The vault will eventually contain microbes from both humans and environmental ecosystems.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
The system will have multiple local collections, where local scientists collect and have their own collections. And then they can deposit a safety backup in a central collection. We have two potential places, Switzerland or Norway.
Christine Fennessy:
And, she says, the project will empower researchers to grow their individual collections, learn which microbes protect against disease and which make disease worse, and share that knowledge.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
We want to preserve microbiomes of the world for the future health of humanity. So when we know what was the function of these microbes, we can use it and restore.
Christine Fennessy:
She envisions the Microbiota Vault becoming the most comprehensive, well researched source of probiotics, those beneficial organisms that support our health. The Microbiota Vault is a global nonprofit initiative. And its work is supported by Rutgers and by the Rutgers University Microbiome Program.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
This is a battle that the whole world needs to engage in, because we are all suffering. It’s not only developed countries that are now facing these new chronic diseases, but developing countries know it’s coming to them too.
Christine Fennessy:
But when it comes to restoring the microbiome, specifically of a child, Dr. Blaser says there’s another big unknown: Can it be restored in time?
Marty Blaser:
Because if there’s a critical developmental window — and maybe that window is the age of three or the age of five — if you restore it when you’re at the age of seven, you may have restored it, but it’s too late. The damage is done because it’s affected development.
Christine Fennessy:
One of the program’s research initiatives may help answer that question. It’s called the New Jersey Kid Study.
Marty Blaser:
We want to enroll 5,000 pregnant women and their babies.
Christine Fennessy:
He says those women will represent the cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic diversity of the state. Researchers will use questionnaires to get information from the mothers.
Marty Blaser:
And we can get specimens from the moms and the kids.
Christine Fennessy:
And they’ll follow these kids for 10 years.
Marty Blaser:
And we know that during that time, some of the kids are going to develop asthma. Some will develop autism; some will become obese. And we will have specimens in the freezer from before they had asthma or autism or obesity. So we could see: Can we figure out what the predictors are? Why did this child develop autism and someone else didn’t?
Christine Fennessy:
He says it’s a major study, and they’re still in the early phases of it. But if they can better understand the early-life microbiome, Dr. Blaser and Professor Dominguez-Bello say, maybe they can develop good restoration approaches and ultimately improve the health of kids.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello:
Again, restoring… if we do it early enough, we can prevent. If we do it late, we cannot cure, because these are incurable diseases. But at least we can manage and improve diseases, improve symptoms. But for me, the crucial [factor] is to understand childhood and then prevent [disease from the outset].
Christine Fennessy:
Dr. Blaser says one of the unique angles of the New Jersey Kids Study and of the Rutgers University Microbiome Program is the size of their team.
Marty Blaser:
We have more than a hundred faculty members from Rutgers.
Christine Fennessy:
And they not only come from the field of medicine, but fisheries and animal sciences, agriculture and engineering, biology, ecology, law, and ethics.
Marty Blaser:
So we’re going to take advantage of the intellectual brainpower of the Rutgers faculty.
Christine Fennessy:
He says this range of expertise is critical.
Marty Blaser:
Because the microbiome touches every aspect of life. It touches health. It touches agriculture, touches energy, environment — you name it.
Christine Fennessy:
Dr. Blaser says the program has many goals: Create new knowledge in the field of microbiome science. Train students to become the next generation of experts. License its knowledge to help companies develop products. And eventually, help communities better understand risks to their microbiome and how to counter them. He envisions RUMP evolving to include individual research programs, centers for study, degree programs, and startups. And ultimately…
Marty Blaser:
We will improve consciousness and thinking about the microbiome, both locally and globally.
Christine Fennessy:
He says the Rutgers University Microbiome Program has come about at just the right time.
Marty Blaser:
So in many ways, we are in the early days of the microbiome revolution. It is a scientific revolution. I liken it to electronics. If 50 years ago someone had said to you, “Well, I think electronics is really going to be a big field. It’s going to change the way we live.” It would’ve turned out to be correct. And I think that microbiome is that kind of field.
Christine Fennessy:
That’s it for today’s show. I’d like to thank Dr. Blaser and Professor Dominguez-Bello for their time and their insight. And remember, this episode is Part One in a two-part microbiome miniseries. In Part Two, Professor Liping Zhao will talk about the importance of dietary fiber in maintaining a healthy gut microbiome and what you can do to improve your own diet.
Music in this episode is by Epidemic Sound. And you can subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Multidisciplinary projects, like the Rutgers University Microbiome Program, embody the innovative drive of Rutgers, New Jersey’s academic health and research powerhouse. I’m your host and producer, Christine Fennessy. Join us next time as we explore more initiatives that will better the world.
Project Details
In today’s world, children grow up without deformed bones caused by a lack of vitamin D or “cloudy” sinuses from infections. Nearly all women survive childbirth. Eighty-year-olds, once consigned to rocking chairs, are swatting tennis balls, often with the help of a metal hip joint.
Yet within the past few decades, amid all of these marvelous medical advances, we appear to be getting sicker. Daily headlines announce the gravity of modern conditions: obesity, childhood diabetes, asthma, hay fever, food allergies, esophageal reflux, cancer, celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, autism, and eczema. In all likelihood, you, someone in your family, or someone you know is afflicted. Unlike most lethal diseases of the past that struck relatively fast and hard, these are chronic conditions that diminish quality of life for decades.
Why are all of these maladies rapidly rising? Is it mere coincidence? If there are 10 newly increasing diseases, are there 10 separate causes? Or could there be one underlying cause fueling all of these parallel increases? A single cause is easier to grasp. What cause could be grand enough to encompass asthma, obesity, esophageal reflux, juvenile diabetes, and food allergies, among all of the others? Many theories have been proposed to explain each disorder. We need to look closely at the microorganisms that make a living in and on our bodies, the massive assemblages of microbes within us known collectively as the microbiome. A wide body of evidence links our changing microbiomes with each of these diseases. Conversely, by better understanding our microbiome, we are beginning to make advances in the treatment of cancer and of certain infectious diseases.
The microbiome is a frontier in both scientific and medical research with great promise in the coming decades. Imagine if, by profiling your microbial makeup, you could know which beneficial strains are missing and what your predisposition to particular diseases is. And what if you could adjust your microbial makeup to its healthiest possible structure by taking personalized treatments? Exciting, isn’t it?
Studies by Rutgers microbiome scientists support the missing microbe hypothesis—that we are losing essential members of a healthy microbiome due to a modern lifestyle and medical practices such as surgical birth, antibiotics, and inadequate diets. Missing beneficial microbes may lead to our gut microbial ecosystem being overtaken by pathogens, which predispose us to chronic diseases. With decades of microbiology experience, three internationally recognized scientists—Martin Blaser, Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, and Liping Zhao—constructed the novel and multidisciplinary Rutgers University Microbiome Program. The mission of the program is to transform microbiome research, training, and therapeutics to improve human and global health and advance public health initiatives. This program will change the landscape of microbiome research by focusing on identifying and characterizing the key members of the gut microbiome essential for keeping us healthy; training future generations of physicians and scientists in microbiome basic, translational, and clinical research; making Rutgers a center of microbiome education; accelerating the translation of scientific discoveries to therapies; forging industry and academic partnerships; and fast‐tracking development of treatments to directly impact human health globally.
Developing a world-class microbiome program will require building collaborative partnerships between academics and industries, particularly pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and healthy foods sectors, and working with industry and philanthropists to pursue novel and innovative microbiome studies. The program has already begun to work with faculty and through initial collaborations with venture capital and industry leaders.
There has never been a better time for Rutgers to directly impact health worldwide as a leader in this important frontier of science. Like electronics in the 1950s, a broad scientific frontier, a few universities emerged as leaders in that seminal field. Rutgers can be one of the global leaders in microbiome research.
Project Champions
Liping Zhao
Eveleigh-Fenton Chair of Applied Microbiology
Zhao is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology; a senior fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research; editor of two high-impact microbiome journals, ISMEJ and Microbiome; and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Center for Microbiome Research and Education of the American Gastroenterology Association. He has published many papers in high-ranking journals, which has made him a world-renowned scientist in the human microbiome field. His pioneering research applies metagenomics-metabolomics-integrated tools and dietary interventions for manipulating gut microbiota to improve human metabolic health. His research has led to important discoveries, such as endotoxin-producing opportunistic pathogens in obese individuals that confer increased obesity risk and inflammation, and that dietary modulation of gut microbiota can significantly alleviate metabolic diseases, including a genetic form of obesity in children and type 2 diabetes in adults. Science magazine featured his work on combining traditional Chinese medicine and gut microbiota to fight obesity.
Gloria Dominguez-Bello
Henry Rutgers Professor of Microbiome and Health
Dominguez-Bello joined Rutgers’ School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in 2018. She is the director of the New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and a senior fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. She has served on the editorial boards of several journals and has more than 150 scientific publications. Her research focuses on the microbiome development from birth, functions for the host, impact by practices that reduce microbial transmission or disrupt the microbiota, and strategies for restoration. She also studies how Westernization changes environmental microbes and human exposures, integrating the fields of anthropology and architecture/urban studies into microbial ecology. Before joining Rutgers, she worked at the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research, the University of Puerto Rico, and the New York University School of Medicine.
Marty Blaser
Director, Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine
Blaser holds the Henry Rutgers Chair of the Human Microbiome at Rutgers, where he also serves as professor of medicine and pathology. Previously, he served as chair of the Department of Medicine at New York University. A physician and microbiologist, he has been studying the relationships we have with our persistently colonizing bacteria. For the past 30 years, his research has focused on Campylobacter species and Helicobacter pylori, which are model systems for understanding the interactions of residential bacteria with their hosts. Over the last 20 years, he has studied the relationship of the human microbiome to health and diseases such as asthma, obesity, diabetes, and cancer. He has served as the adviser to many students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty. He is chair of the Presidential Advisory Council for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria. He holds 28 U.S. patents and has written more than 600 original articles. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has received the Alexander Fleming Award and the Robert Koch Gold Medal for his contributions to medical research. He wrote Missing Microbes, a book targeted to general audiences and translated into 20 languages.