BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Commense, focused on preventing and treating disease through microbiome-based interventions in infancy and early childhood, advances its discovery and development platform, names its founding scientists and advisors and executes an exclusive license in the microbiome field.
“A child’s early interactions with microbes can play an essential role in health and are believed to impact the later development of serious conditions such as asthma, food allergies, type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis,” said David Steinberg, co-founder of Commense and Executive Vice President at PureTech. “We are pleased to advance our work in the early childhood microbiome with the expansion of our pipeline and the addition of an esteemed group of advisors.”
Commense’s work builds on the decades of data supporting the “hygiene hypothesis,” which suggests that a lack of early childhood exposure to key microbes increases the risk of numerous early childhood diseases common in developed countries. Commense is developing a pipeline of novel therapeutics for the prevention and treatment of disease based on a deep understanding of these human/microbe interactions and their impact on health. Supporting this pipeline is Commense’s platform to characterize and design microbiome-based therapeutics to potentially restore these “missing microbes,” along with a suite of technologies designed to improve measurement and diagnosis, delivery and microbial colonization.
Exclusive Worldwide License
Commense has obtained an
exclusive, worldwide license from New York University on a key building
block of its platform, an approach focused on replenishing and
bolstering the microbial exposure that a baby experiences at birth
during passage through the birth canal. This technology is designed to
enable microbial transfer in newborns who may not receive the vaginal
microbiome, including those delivered by caesarian section (C-section).
The work supporting this technology is from the lab of Commense
co-founder and Scientific Advisory Board member Maria Gloria
Dominguez-Bello, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU Langone
Medical Center, and was published in the February 1, 2016 issue of Nature
Medicine.
“Until very recently, every surviving mammal has been delivered through the birth canal. In C-sections, the lack of the protective microbes with which we've co-evolved could be very important for many conditions, including diabetes, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease, that we now know involve the microbiome,” said Dr. Rob Knight, a coauthor of the Nature Medicine study, and a member of Commense’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB).
The study demonstrated that vaginal microbial transfer could be performed to seed newborns delivered by C-section with microbes derived from the mother’s birth canal, in a procedure mimicking natural birth. This procedure enhanced the levels of potentially beneficial microbes throughout the 30-day follow-up period. Commense is extending this approach by developing microbial and non-microbial interventions that could benefit millions of children each year worldwide.
“These extremely exciting initial data give promise to the hope that all newborns might receive the potential health advantages of their mothers’ beneficial microbes, in a manner reminiscent of the now-established benefits of fecal microbial transfers for C. difficile infections,” said Dr. Dominguez-Bello. “We’ve been overwhelmed by the support and positive response to the study by mothers, physicians, and researchers.”
Numerous studies have documented associations between C-sections and increased rates of allergies, immune disorders, asthma, autism and obesity. In the United States, about one in three babies is delivered by C-section, and in some countries the rate of C-section exceeds 50 percent.
Founding Scientists and Advisors
Commense was co-founded by PureTech
Health (“PureTech,” LSE: PRTC) and a group of the world’s leading
researchers in the field of the human microbiome and its role in infant
and maternal health. The founding scientists and advisors include:
- Rob Knight, Ph.D., (SAB Member) – Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Professor Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego); Director of UC San Diego's Center for Microbiome Innovation; co-founder of the Earth Microbiome Project and American Gut; pioneer of key computational and experimental techniques for characterizing and designing complex microbial communities in different ecosystems; author of TED book Follow Your Gut: The Enormous Impact of Tiny Microbes;
- Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, Ph.D., (Scientific Co-Founder and SAB Member) – Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center; lead author of the Nature Medicine study and pioneer in characterizing and understanding microbial exposures early in life;
- Martin J. Blaser, M.D., (Scientific Co-Founder and SAB Member) – Professor of Microbiology, NYU Langone Medical Center; Director of the Human Microbiome Program; internationally recognized for his pioneering work in discovering the progressive loss of microbial diversity in the microbiota of people living in developed countries and its effects on health; and author of Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues;
- B. Brett Finlay, Ph.D., (Scientific Co-Founder and SAB Member) – Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of British Columbia; pioneer in understanding how loss of key microbes in children can affect disease, including atopic diseases and allergy; and author of forthcoming book Let Them Eat Dirt, which will explore how the microbes that inhabit our bodies influence childhood development;
- Joseph St. Geme III, M.D., (Advisor and SAB Member) – Physician-in-Chief and Chairman of Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania; and leading clinician and researcher in the area of pediatric host-bacterial interactions; and
- Sam Kass, (Advisor and Commense Board Member) – former Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition Policy at the White House and former Executive Director of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! childhood health campaign.
“The more we learn about the microbiome, the more we realize how fundamental it is to human health,” said Dr. Blaser. “We believe that one of the most important windows of exposure to beneficial microbes is at birth, so Commense represents a critical step forward for infants and mothers.”
About Commense
Commense
is pioneering a deep understanding of the microbiome early in life and
its fundamental role in promoting a lifetime of health. Drawing insights
from natural exposures to beneficial microbes, Commense is developing
approaches to guide the priming, seeding, and maintaining of the
microbiome in infants and children. Co-founded by PureTech
Health (“PureTech,” LSE: PRTC) and working with the world’s leading
microbiome scientists, physicians, and product developers, Commense is
developing a novel category of products to address critical unmet needs
in pediatric populations.
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