Washington University in St. Louis (WU)
The microbial communities associated with our body are important determinants of our health, particularly in the intestines where they shape interactions with our diet. Our work focuses on the role of the gut microbiota in influencing healthy growth of infants and children and in the pathogenesis of malnutrition, the leading cause of under-5 childhood mortality worldwide. Our preclinical work with gnotobiotic animals and observational clinical work has established a link between the age-appropriate developmental trajectory of the microbiota and aspects of malnutrition – from this concept we have developed microbiota-directed complementary food (MDCF) formulations intended to repair the microbial communities of children with moderate acute malnutrition. Clinical tests of these MDCFs in Bangladesh demonstrated clinical proof-of-concept that a lead formulation produced significant improvement in the rate of weight gain compared to a commonly administered ready-to-use supplementary food that was not designed to repair the gut microbiota.