# Engineering microbiota to optimize population-level health

> **NIH NIH P01** · UNIVERSITY OF OREGON · 2020 · $284,253

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT (PROJECT 3)
Increasing numbers of human ailments, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), metabolic syndrome,
and diabetes, have been linked to disturbances in resident microbial communities. In these diseases, no single
infectious organism is implicated, but instead abnormal, also called dysbiotic microbial communities, often
characterized by an overabundance of pro-inflammatory taxa and an underrepresentation of anti-
inflammatory taxa, are implicated in causing disease symptoms. Mounting evidence suggests that pro-
inflammatory microbiota can be self-perpetuating because the inflamed host environment selects for microbes
that promote and thrive on conditions that perpetuate inflammation. We hypothesize that transmission of pro-
inflammatory microbiota members increases the likelihood of developing disease, and that this transmission is
enhanced by the absence of anti-inflammatory taxa that would normally curtail a chronically inflamed host
environment. We hypothesize that transmissible anti-inflammatory strains would be useful not only for
alleviating inflammation in individual hosts, but for spreading resistance to pro-inflammatory strains, thereby
creating herd immunity to disease-causing strains similar to vaccination. We propose to engineer microbiota
members that function as “smart probiotics” to sense and alleviate host inflammation in a modulated and local
fashion. We will determine how to tune the therapeutic and transmission properties of these smart probiotics
to optimize their capacity to treat inflammation in individual hosts and to disseminate sufficiently between
hosts to generate protection against the spread of pro-inflammatory strains on a population scale. These
experiments will establish the design principles for engineering transmissible health.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9990826
- **Project number:** 5P01GM125576-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
- **Principal Investigator:** Karen J Guillemin
- **Activity code:** P01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $284,253
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-08-06 → 2023-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9990826

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9990826, Engineering microbiota to optimize population-level health (5P01GM125576-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9990826. Licensed CC0.

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