Anaerobic Bacterial Spore Therapeutics and their Manufacture

"The gut microbiome is a pharmacologically active tissue controlling infection, inflammation, receptor signalling, hormone secretion and central nervous system signalling. These events have significant impacts on patient health and wellbeing (Nature Special Review, June 2012). The importance of the gut microbiome in both health and disease is now widely recognised resulting in an explosion in research, development and pharma investment in new therapeutics, based on live microbes, that can treat chronic gut related diseases.

Clostridia are the most prevalent class of microbes in the human large intestine. CHAIN Biotech capitalises on its unique expertise with these bacteria to develop a novel live biotherapeutic for treating inflammatory bowel disease. This product has been validated in pre-clinical tests and we now seek a manufacturing partner that can produce spores for clinical trials. No such facility exists in the UK and this project seeks to address this bottleneck. More specifically, the partners will determine the costs and economic feasibility to build a bespoke spore manufacturing plant in the South East for CHAIN and other SME microbiome and biotech companies."