Menu OUR PLATFORM Seres’ pioneering science, paired with powerful drug development and manufacturing capabilities, underpins its unique therapeutics platform. Transforming rigorous scientific insights into a groundbreaking new class of medicines A robust body of research, which includes work by Seres and our collaborators, has revealed the integral role the gut microbiome plays in overall human health. Increasingly the gut microbiome is understood as a pillar of essential functions such as metabolism, immune and inflammatory responses, and protection against potential invaders. Bacteria, a major component of the gut microbiome, can affect these various functions by producing metabolites which interact with other microbes and the host. Scientific understanding of the role of the microbiome and microbe-associated metabolites has advanced tremendously and is allowing development of therapeutics to treat a variety of serious diseases. Over the past decade, Seres has pioneered the translation of microbiome insights into an entirely new class of medicines, two of which are in late-stage clinical testing. Our microbiome therapeutics are consortia of bacteria in oral capsules that are designed to have specific functional pharmacological properties to modify the gut microbiome to treat and prevent disease. Microbiome therapeutics can drive pharmacological effects across multiple pathways simultaneously. OUR STRATEGY BENEFITS OVER PROBIOTICS AND FMT Our approach: Delivering a multifunctional consortium of bacteria HEALTHY MICROBIOME TOGGLE INFOGRAPHIC NAV The gastrointestinal (GI) microbiome consists of diverse bacteria which contribute to our metabolism and our immune function and have impacts throughout the body — protecting against numerous diseases, including serious infections, chronic inflammatory diseases like ulcerative colitis, and cancer. At the heart of our approach are multifunctional consortia of bacteria that are designed to functionally interact with host cells and tissues to treat disease. We use data from clinical studies to discover the microbes and microbe-associated metabolites that functionally interact with human cells and tissues and can be targeted to treat diseases, such as ulcerative colitis and C. difficile infection, or to improve the response to disease treatments, such as cancer immunotherapy. We then utilize advanced computational tools and proprietary functional assays to design consortia of commensal bacteria that modulate these targets and act on multiple microbial and host functions. Our focus on function reflects a key discovery from recent large-scale analyses of the gut microbiome: though microbiome composition can vary widely between healthy individuals, the functional outputs of a healthy microbiome are universal. In other words, good health and resistance to disease depend on the functions provided by the community of microbes, rather than on the presence or absence of any specific bacterial species. Seres is harnessing defined consortia, or collections, of bacteria to modulate microbiome function. In contrast to conventional therapeutics, which target just one disease pathway, bacterial consortia are multifunctional. This means they can have multiple pharmacological effects and modulate numerous functional pathways within the body to achieve therapeutic impact. OUR APPROACH BENEFITS OVER PROBIOTICS AND FMT Our strategy: The Microbiome Therapeutics Engine Seres has built an unprecedented Microbiome Therapeutics Engine to design, test and manufacture multifunctional bacterial consortia. MICROBIOME THERAPEUTICS ENGINE 1. Microbiome biomarker discovery As we begin development of a new therapeutic for a disease of interest, we gather insights from existing clinical studies and microbiome datasets. These datasets come from human subjects for the relevant patient population, a critical first step that is known as reverse translation. Starting with patient data allows us to identify and target drug development efforts on modulating microbiome functions that are clinically relevant to the disease. We deploy our proprietary, customized analytical tools to interrogate tissue samples, genomic and metabolomic data (revealing important bacterial functions and species), and findings from our own and others’ human studies to discern which microbes and microbiome functions are altered in disease or predict a poor clinical outcome. These microbiome biomarkers define disease-relevant functional pathways that become our drug targets. OUR APPROACH OUR STRATEGY Benefits of Seres' microbiome therapeutics over probiotics and fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) Seres’ microbiome therapeutics offer critical benefits over other live microbial treatments intended to modify the gut microbiome, including probiotics and fecal microbiota transplantation. Seres’ therapeutic candidates are being developed to be supported by a robust evidence base and are rigorously evaluated for both safety and efficacy. READ MORE © 2021 Seres Therapeutics Privacy Policy Terms of use Follow us on Linkedin Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Facebook