**National Human Genome Research Institute\
International Human Microbiome Consortium**

**October 8, 2008**

**4:00 pm CT**

Conference Coordinator: Good morning and welcome to the International
Human Microbiome Consortium media briefing hosted by the U.S. National
Institutes of Health. This briefing will last approximately 60 minutes.
There will be five primary speakers who will provide brief remarks and
then members of the media will be able to ask questions.

To ask a question you can press star and 1 on your touchtone phone to
enter the queue. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by
simply pressing the pound key.

This call will be recorded, transcribed, and available on the websites
of participating organizations including the National Human Genome
Research Institute.

Now it's my pleasure to turn the program over to your moderator Larry
Thompson, Chief of Communications of the National Human Genome Research
Institute.

Larry Thompson: Good morning or good afternoon depending on where you
are in the world. My name is Larry Thompson and I am the Communications
Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute in the U.S. and
pleased to welcome you to this briefing.

A press release describing today's announcement will be found on the
page - the home page of w - of the - of my Institute - of the Genome
Institute at [www.genome.gov](http://www.genome.gov/) and at the
European Molecular Biology Lab at [www.embl.org](http://www.embl.org/),
O-R-G, at the end of the briefing.

Participating members of the newly organized International Human
Microbiome Consortium have been meeting in Heidelberg, Germany, for the
past two days and there are a number of participants. A number of
countries will be participating in this international effort including
Australia, Canada, China, Europe as in the European Commission which
will be one of the main funding organizations along with the U.S.,
France, Ireland, Japan, The Republic of Korea and of course the United
States.

So our expert panel will describe the agreements that have been reached,
what they hope this consortium will accomplish. The panel in speaking
order will be Dr. Jane Peterson, Associate Director of Extramural
Research at The National Human Genome Research Institute representing
the U.S. funders; Dr. Christian Desaintes from the Research Directorate
of the European Commission representing the European funders; Dr. Dusko
Ehrlich, Principal Investigator of the MetaHIT Project in Europe; Dr.
George Weinstock a Principal Investigator of the Human Microbiome
Project in the United States; and Dr. Peer Bork, Head of the IHMC
Bioinformatics Group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and
the host of this meeting in Heidelberg.

So let us get started with opening remarks by Dr. Peterson. Jane\...

Jane Peterson: Thank you. The NIH is very pleased to be part of this
international effort that we put together here in Heidelberg. We've had
extensive experience with other international collaborations such as The
Humane Genome Project when results have been very important in advanced
science of - and under our understanding of human health. The whole is
usually greater than the sum of the parts in these collaborations.

This collaboration will take a genome approach to identifying all the
key microorganisms that live in and on the body for the purpose of
understanding their contribution to health and disease. And when I say
genome approach, I mean, sampling the body parts and base \-- and
sequencing the DNA from a variety of organisms that we find there. This
provides the identity of most types of organisms present in the sample,
even those that are difficult to culture from human tissue.

The European Commission and the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services on behalf of the U.S. Government have signed a letter of intent
to collaborate on this effort and this letter spells out a number of
important components of the government's (unintelligible) and
collaboration that \-- and these elements have now been, for the most
part, have been adopted by the International Human Microbiome
Consortium.

These principals are free and open release of data and resources
generated by these projects, coordination of research plans to make them
as efficient as possible and for efficient use of resources on
unnecessary duplication and to share innovative developments on how best
to answer the questions raised by the project.

I'm looking forward to this collaboration. I think it's going to be a
wonderful collaboration that we've put together and we'll learn a lot
from each other.

I'm going to turn it over now to Dr. Christian Desaintes from the
European Commission.

Christian Desaintes: Thank you Jane. I'm pleased that the European
Commission is playing a leadership and funding role in the International
Human Microbiome Consortium that will lead to understanding how our
microbial companions impact on our health. I'm also pleased that there
is a formal agreement between the European Commission and the U.S.
Government to formalize this effort and to ensure that high quality
research will be accomplished by the researchers supported through this
enterprise.

The agreement between the two countries and other counties from other
parts of the world that have yet to join the Consortium continues the
tradition of international collaboration which has been such a benefit
for all peoples everywhere.

Sharing the knowledge generated within this consortium with researchers
around the world is crucial for determining the complex role of the
microbiome in viral disease. Sharing this knowledge will accelerate the
discovery of better drugs for different pathology as well as improve
prevention of illness in people of any age or nationality.

During the meeting here in Heidelberg we agreed to general principals
for membership and common policies to provide data rapidly into public
databases. It became also clear - apparent that participation through
the International Human Microbiome Consortium might involve 8 to 11
projects from 10 different countries. Globally we estimate that more
than 200 million U.S. dollars will be committed to the International
Human Microbiome Consortium.

In five years we expect to be sequencing more than 1000 microbial
genomes and sampling will be taken from more than 1000 individuals of
different body types.

I will now turn it to Dusko Ehrlich.

Dusko Ehrlich: We know that there are ten times more microbial cells in
our own body than our own cells. That there are 100 times more microbial
genes that are active in our body than our own genes. We know that
microbes that live with us play an important role in our health and
disease, but we do not know (by far) what these microorganisms are and
how do they act.

IHMC aims to provide description of microbial genes and genomes and find
how do they work. This should lead to better understanding of human
biology and also better understanding of disease and health.

The MetaHIT Project will contribute first to the reference catalog of
genes and genomes. By analyzing individuals from two European regions
Mediterranean in Spain, and Nordic in Denmark and it will focus on two
pathologies of increasing social importance: Obesity and Inflammatory
Bowel Disease.

Meta genome from some 400 individuals will be examined by high - very
high (unintelligible) DNA sequencing techniques searching for
associations between bacterial genes and human disease.

So MetaHIT fits perfectly with our goals of IHMC and participants in the
project are pleased and proud to be part of IHMC.

I will pass now the microphone to George Weinstock.

George Weinstock: Thank you Dusko. So I'm here with my colleagues from
other genome centers in the U.S. representing the NIH component of the
Human Microbiome Project.

So I'm at the Washington University genome center and my colleagues are
from the genome center at the Broad Institute in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, Baylor College of Medicine's genome center in Houston,
and the J. Craig Venter Institute which is in Rockville, Maryland. And
then we also have the leader of the data center which is at the
University of Maryland here and that group really comprises the main
infrastructure for the NIH program.

The NIH program is focusing on articulating the microbial composition of
five body sites; oral, vaginal, skin, nasal and gastrointestinal tract
microorganisms. And we're at the moment focusing on describing the
microbial communities in healthy or normal individuals as a prelude to
studying how those communities change to cause disease or to be affected
by disease states. We are extremely excited about what happened here in
the last two days with the international community, because you know
there were very, very few projects that allow us to get scientists
together from all the points of the compass with a common goal in a
project of this scale and this importance.

So we spent the last two days without any difficulty coming to
agreements about data release, about ethical considerations, about
technology, about the different projects going on in the different parts
of the world, and I think we're all very excited about looking forward
to how the bridges that we've started to build here will be enhanced and
allow all of us to do our projects locally as well as the synergy that
comes from getting people together with different ideas.

So I'll pass it now to Peer Bork who is at the European Molecular
Biology Lab here in Heidelberg.

Peer Bork: Yeah thanks. As a local organizer I also would like to
express my excitement of the meetings that so many people could agree on
a number of very complex and complicated issues such as data release as
was mentioned and also (unintelligible) that includes (EPI) that promote
open access so we are very happy with the option here to vote for open
access policies for the data.

And that comes to the issue where lots of effort has been spent because
of the flow of (unintelligible) genome data and integration. Because
these data will be (unintelligible) from very different coming from
parts of the world with very different premises and projects.

So the data range from deep profiling with individuals to broad spectrum
studies under various conditions for some diseases conditions and the
lots of contextual data that becomes meta data, age, gender, et cetera,
et cetera, which adds a huge value to understand those data and the
impact on health and the body.

So bioinformatics is a (unintelligible) a huge challenge and accessing
research against the two large projects, NIH and Europe setup centers
for the correlation and considered analysis of the data and we'll
closely interact. The data will also be released via the MCBI or BBI in
an open access way.

So what's next (unintelligible) a kind of spectrum analysis and
(unintelligible) it has to be discovered for example how the species and
genome composition change over time till we have our own
(unintelligible) species each and (unintelligible) individual
(unintelligible). So (unintelligible) I think very soon the first
disease - study for disease impact regarding diagnostics for example are
to be expected.

With that, it's off to Larry I guess.

Larry Thompson: Okay yes. So this is Larry Thompson again. So we have
several folks on the phone so if you guys would like to ask a question
of the expert panel, now would be the time to indicate that to (Kevin).
So (Kevin), want to give us the instructions again please?

Conference Coordinator: Certainly. At this time if you'd like to ask a
question please press the star and 1 on your touchtone phone. You may
withdraw yourself at any time from the queue by pressing the pound key.
Once again to ask a question, please press the star and 1 on your
touchtone phone.

Larry Thompson: Okay I don't\...There we go. So (Anna) would you like to
go ahead and ask the first question. Would you please tell us where
you're from? Introduce yourself and tell us where you're from, please.

(Anna Pederick): Sure hi my name is (Anna Pederick), I'm from (Nature),
I'm the (Research Highlights Editor). I would like to ask a bit more
about the project looking at Nordic and Mediterranean people. I did hope
someone could just tell me a bit more information about that.

Dusko Ehrlich: Okay so the MetaHIT Project which will look at\...

((Crosstalk)))

Larry Thompson: Excuse me sir, because we can't see anybody's faces, our
expert panel, would you also please identify yourself when you're
responding so the reporters will know who's speaking.

Dusko Ehrlich: Thank you for the reminder. I thought that my accent will
be so difficult. Dusko Ehrlich, MetaHIT Coordinator. So MetaHIT is
focusing on populations in Spain and in Denmark. We will get information
about healthy individuals basically as a control for patients in
Barcelona where the study is being conducted will focus on patients with
Inflammatory Bowel Disease; while in Denmark. In the Copenhagen area we
will focus on Obesity. Then (unintelligible) in Spain we will have
healthy control.

Now the Danish study is quite interesting because the cohort that we'll
be using has been (unintelligible) already in 1999 to reflect
genetically the population in the - in Denmark in Copenhagen region. So
we will get interesting data about that.

Larry Thompson: Okay. Does that meet your needs (Anna)?

(Anna Pederick): Yeah. It did. So just so I understand, the Barcelona
study is looking at healthy controls to compare to future studies and
the Copenhagen study is actually a cohort of people - of obese people
and people who aren't yet obese, is that correct?

Dusko Ehrlich: In the MetaHIT study it is a cohort of obese people and
of course healthy control. In MetaHIT we will be studying about 200
individuals drawn from the 5000 strong cohort which really a very small
subpopulation of the whole (unintelligible) '99 cohort.

Larry Thompson: Okay I don't have any other questions in the queue so
reporters who are on the phone if anybody else would like to ask another
question, please indicate by, you know, doing whatever it was that
(Kevin) said a minute ago. Star, 1 I guess is what you're supposed to
point.

Okay so Gretchen has indicated she would like to do a story, or ask a
question so Gretchen would you introduce yourself and tell us where
you're from and go ahead with your question please.

Gretchen Vogel: Gretchen Vogel from Science Magazine. Just a quick
follow-up question to (Anna)'s question and then a separate question,
200 individuals from the 5000 strong cohort you said, are those
individuals then all obese or is that a mixture of obese and non-obese
individuals?

Dusko Ehrlich: It's a mixture of obese and non-obese. Sixty have
non-obese, 60 have a particular obese genotype which is
(unintelligible), and 60 have another genotype of obesity which is
subcutaneous obesity. The reason is that comorbidity is correlated with
the first type but not with the second type and we are very interested
in finding out whether of course microbiome in these populations are
different.

Gretchen Vogel: Okay and you're looking at the gut microbiome then for
those?

Dusko Ehrlich: Yes that is correct. I'm sorry I should have specified
that.

Gretchen Vogel: Okay. Good and then in general, I understand that you're
very excited - you're all very excited about these agreements that have
been signed, what I didn't quite grasp is what's new here? How will this
change your work? These projects were already underway. Does this
guarantee new money? Is this new rules about how these projects will
then release their data? That was brought up a couple of times. New
methods of coordinating who does what? Can anybody sort of summarize for
me a couple of the most important impacts that these agreements will
have on how research is conducted?

Jane Peterson: This is Jane Peterson. I'm going to try to answer this
but I invite my colleagues here to add topics that I might not think of.
So what's new here is that this is a field that really is very young.
It's - we all met together for the first time two and a half years ago I
think, maybe three, and we all realized that there was a growing
interest in studying this field and that there was more to be gained by
collaborating and propo - promoting the field than there was to working
alone.

So what's very important in the human microbiome - in studying the human
microbiome is comparing results from all around the world. And as you
heard we have nine countries represented here from around the world. So
environment has a significant impact on human microbiome content and
proportions, et cetera, so that's one important thing that we'll get out
of the collaboration, an ability to compare those data directly. Of
course anybody can access the data and do that also, but the Consortium
working together will have a very efficient way of doing that.

Important about this meeting was that we all agreed that the data will
be open so that we can all look at the data and so that the rest of the
world can look at it and ask questions that we would never have thought
of.

And then you also asked about does this get us more funds. Some on the
projects such as the MetaHIT Project and the NIH Human Microbiome
Project are already set in amount of funds. The Canadian project has a
set amount of funds. Let me think about the other ones \-- the Korean
project but some - and the Chinese project, but some of the others, such
as Australia and Ireland perhaps - are still in the formation of their
consortiums and they're putting to - and they are still looking for
additional funds, so it may actually increase the funds in the long run.

But what we hope - the whole consortium - the interest in human
microbiome across the world will do is stimulate funding around the
world for the - this area of research in looking at human disease.

Man: This is (unintelligible) form the (Community Republic Research
Project) let me take another angle of this (unintelligible) direction.
There's a lot of buzz around what this means and I think that one of the
consequences of the (unintelligible) interaction where this project
clearly going to have a major impact. I think that we will understand a
lot more about the environmental influence on ourselves than we ever did
ever before.

Gretchen Vogel: Because you have - I'm sorry, is that because you have
access to more environments around the world eventually?

((Crosstalk)))

Man: Absolutely. Isolated populations, special populations that they
are - whether they are in China or whether they are in UK, Europe, or
North America, I think we have unique opportunity here.

Gretchen Vogel: Can I have one more follow-up?

Larry Thompson: Yes. Go ahead.

Gretchen Vogel: One thing I noticed is that most of the participants are
from industrialized countries. Are there any projects that are looking
at the differences between or looking at populations in say Africa or
South America or from developing countries?

Man: Well China probably is not an industrialized country yet.

Gretchen Vogel: Okay.

Man: So we - I'm (unintelligible) from (unintelligible) University and
I'm Coordinator for Chinese MetaHIT Project which is to look at the
reason behind why when we change our diet from traditional to more
western type in the past 20 years also we have a dramatic increase of
metabolic diseases dietary related. Probably gut microbial plays a
substantial role in this change of disease spectrum.

And so one thing we are doing now is trying to sequence the metagenome
of 10 Chinese healthy - Chinese people who are still keeping the
traditional diet and so these can be used as a reference for us to
understand why change of diet to western type will make Chinese people
become susceptible to metabolic diseases. And this is what we are doing
for this part of the Chinese Project.

Dusko Ehrlich: Dusko Ehrlich here. Maybe I just like to add couple of
statements. First, you know, Metagenome is huge. Much bigger than the
Human Genome. It is just not conceivable for anybody to do it on his or
her own. People needed to get together. So clearly when you work
together, when you pool the data, when you get comprehensive description
of metagenome, there is great benefit and that is one of the objectives
of IHMC.

Now the point about the places in the world where there are not
resources to do that because of course it requires resources. You have
to keep in mind that - something keep in mind that description of human
metagenome is extremely poor yet. We have to start somewhere. So we are
starting in places where resources are unavailable.

But it would be of course wonderful and we need to meet the challenge
how do we address metagenome in places where resources are not
available? Should we be thinking about approaching a foundation like
Bill Gates to help us get information for African populations? Well
that's one thought. How do we deal with most of Africa? Can we get their
friends who live in richer oil countries to help that? I don't know. But
it is a question that we haven't addressed yet that is in front of us
and that we need to address.

Jane Peterson: This is Jane Peterson again. I should mention that we've
had interest from an investigator in Mexico which again is sort of in
between an industrialized country and one of the countries that is
getting to industrialized. Oh and there's also interest from India and
so we don't know quite how those countries are going to work into the
Consortium.

Larry Thompson: Okay. Somebody else? Gretchen did you have a follow-up?
Nope. So if there is anybody else, I don't have any other questions in
the queue currently if - does anybody else have a question? Is anybody
else there?

Got cut off, man. That's not good. You got the phone number for me
there?

Man: (Unintelligible).

Conference Coordinator: And (Larry Davis)'s line has been reconnected -
or Larry Thompson's line has been reconnected. Is (Sally Davis)'s line
still on?

Woman: Yes, we're still here.

Larry Thompson: Okay and is anybody, any other reporters still on the
line? Because I can see them (Kevin), but can you confirm there still
there? I still see Gretchen Vogel and that's about it actually.

Conference Coordinator: Yes we still have Gretchen Vogel's line and a
(Lynn Wegner) and (Rebecca Colberg).

Larry Thompson: Okay. Okay so. Actually the only reporter that we still
seem to have on the line is Gretchen. So Gretchen I guess if you have
any other questions you got the whole panel and if not we'll bring this
to a conclusion. I can't hear anybody.

Conference Coordinator: Gretchen you're line is reopened. You can ask
your question.

Gretchen Vogel: Okay I guess since I have the - I have an exclusive,
I'll ask another question.

((Crosstalk)))

Larry Thompson: Please do. Please go ahead.

Gretchen Vogel: Just to follow-up briefly, just so I make sure I
understood correctly. The agreements that come out of this will
definitely assist in coordinating data sharing and then is there a
master plan for dividing up the work or is that something that will sort
of happen as the projects get under way and as more people join the
Consortium? How will that be handled? Or have you already come up - have
you come up with a master plan as part of your meeting here?

Jane Peterson: This is Jane Peterson again. Their - each group will do
their own research. Some of us are looking at healthy individuals, some
are looking at different diseases, a lot are looking in the gut at
different gut related diseases, there's one looking at (Asian) people.
I'm trying to think what the other sites are.

And then we will meet together to discuss and obviously our data will be
shared because it will be freely available. So we're not - it's not like
Human Genome where we're all doing the same - working with the same
samples. We're all working with different samples to generate
information about the same biological site I guess I would say. Does
anybody want to add to that? What are different diseases or
(unintelligible).

(Joel Dore): (Joel Dore) from France. I'll just add a word. We have seen
projects emerging, focusing on the sequencing of the genome of
individual bacterial strains isolated from the human gut and it was
quite obvious that the sharing of information and arbitration on
decisions on who is doing which genome was quite important and the IHMC
discussions are contributing very significantly towards this
organization.

Jane Peterson: That reminds me. We will have a common strain list that
all the groups are doing and we will not duplicate, so if \-- this is
for the whole genome sequencing. So we'll make sure that the groups that
are sequencing the entire genome of a microbe will be doing something
unique and won't be duplicating it with another country. But the
metagenomic studies are being done on all different types of cohorts.

Gretchen Vogel: Sure that makes sense.

Larry Thompson: Okay. Are there any other questions?

Conference Coordinator: Again as a reminder, if you'd like to ask a
question please press the star and 1 on your touchtone phone.

Larry Thompson: And I'm not seeing any. Are your - do you got everything
you need Gretchen? And I'm going to guess that's a yes. So I guess I
would like to bring this to a close then and thank everyone for
participating in today's briefing.

I'll remind you that there will be a press release put up on - about
this Consortium announcement on both
[www.genome.gov](http://www.genome.gov/) and
[www.embl.org](http://www.embl.org/) where there will also be media
contact numbers for the media, for the press if you need to try to reach
anybody although most of the participants are in Heidelberg so we'll do
the best we can to hook you up.

And then we will post the audio of this file as quickly as we can,
followed by a transcript as soon as that's completed.

So again I'd like to thank everyone for participating and with that I'd
like to bring this briefing to a close. Thank you.

Conference Coordinator: This does conclude today's teleconference. You
may disconnect now. Thank you and have a great day.

END