Diving deep into the microbiome, Dr. Tiffany Vora looked at bacteria and how life science technologies have so much to offer as an innovation space. Bacteria is a living medicine, and we need to now view biology as technology, the same way we look at artificial intelligence.

1. The Microbiome:
What’s Your Gut Feeling?
Dr. Tiffany Vora
April 23, 2019

3. Shutterstock

4. David et al., Genome Biology 2014 Kang et al., Cell Reports 2018

5. Images courtesy of Shutterstock and CDC/James Gathany
Bactana
Ascus Biosciences
Trace Genomics
Indigo Agriculture
BioAg Alliance
Boost Biomes
QuantuMDx
Sandia
Cue

6. The Microbiome
and Me

7. Data
Therapies
Drugs
Wellness
Data
Shutterstock

10. Bacteroides fragilis
Sgritta et al., Neuron 2018
Commercially
available
probiotic!

11. Shutterstock
Drag And Drop
Biological Engineering

12. Pharmacogenomics
Human
Bacteria
Fungi
Viruses
Drug delivery
Monitoring
Implantables
Cellular factories
Shutterstock

13. Based on van Nood et al., NJEM 368;5 (2013)

14. ● Infections
○ Gut
○ Nose/lungs
○ Skin
● Food sensitivity
● Birth/c-sections
● Behavior

15. Shutterstock

16. I would invest today in a company that’s
❏ Developing new probiotics
❏ Building and selling smart toilets
❏ Commercializing Fecal Microbiome Transplants
❏ Developing drugs that target the microbiome

17. The Exponential
Microbiome

18. CDC Global
Panigrahi et al., Nature 2017
● 4,556 infants
● L. plantarum
● Daily dose, 1 week
CAD $1.3
● Sepsis ↓40%
● Infection ↓75-80%
● Pneumonia ↓34%
● No side effects

19. Ridaura et al., Science 2013
CDC/Dr. Lyle Conrad
Smith et al., Science 2013Shutterstock

20. Shutterstock

21. 2016
2 in 5 adults are
overweight or obese
2 in 12 adults have
type 2 diabetes
Data from the 2016 Global Nutrition Report Shutterstock

22. 667 million children <5 years old
155 million children
are stunted
52 million children
are wasted
Data from the 2016 Global Nutrition Report Shutterstock
41 million children
are overweight

23. ShutterstockBlack et al., The Lancet, 2008

24. 2016 Global Nutrition Report:
Stunting, Wasting
Overweight
Adult obesity/overweight
2.1%, 0.5%
6.0%
67.3%
321 million people
38.7%, 15.1%
1.9%
22.0%
1.25 billion people
9.4%, 2.3%
6.6%
34.4%
1.4 billion people

25. Take it home
● Treat your body as an ecosystem
The Good Gut I Contain Multitudes uBiome
● Play with the tech
● Stay tuned!

26. Thank you!
Dr. Tiffany Vora
Faculty Director
Vice Chair, Digital Biology & Medicine
tiffany.vora@su.org
Remind me that we met at
the SUCanada Summit!