Microbiome-Mediated Drug Metabolism Database

The same drug or dietary supplement can behave differently in different people. This is in part due to the difference in the genome between individuals, and it is also increasingly evident that this is caused, in part, by the different microbiomes within individuals.

 A greater understanding of this interaction is required to achieve the healthcare objective of precision medicine.

• The microbiome has a profound impact on drug behaviour in an individual
• This community allows for data pooling from different organizations, an elegant and challenging pre-competitive activity
• A better understanding of the microbiome will lower barriers to R&D innovation

The community conducted in three stages:

1. Stage One: Curate existing data on the microbiome-derived metabolism of pharmaceutical drugs and other chemical compounds (such as polyphenols, flavonoids, alkaloids) from existing publications, public data repositories, and internal pharma company data. Then, this data will be standardized to build a machine-readable ‘atlas’ that will allow researchers to quickly search for and discover the links between the microbiome, the body, and other chemicals.
2. Stage Two: Determine any specific chemical groups of interest with the companies that financially support the community, and start building a prediction tool that can be incorporated into future therapeutic development.
3. Stage Three: Scale the predictive algorithm and aim to make this database the standard one for determining the effect of drugs and dietary supplements on the microbiome.

Who can join? To achieve the community goals, a cross-industry team is required. Technology supply and services companies, pharma, nutraceutical organizations, and academic organizations studying the effects of the microbiome, as well as scientists involved in microbiome research, ADME/Tox, bioinformatics, data science, and AI/ML, and any other interested parties, are all welcome to participate.