Microba Life Sciences Limited (ASX: MAP) has confirmed that $2.92m in funding has been awarded by the Medical Research Future Fund to support Microba and the QUT Centre for Microbiome Research (CMR).
The funding will be used to isolate and characterise thousands of new species from the human microbiome to establish a world-leading human microbiome biobank – the Australian Human Microbiome Biobank (AHMB).
The establishment of the AHMB represents an enormous opportunity for Microba, providing a valuable resource to advance our current therapeutic programmes in inflammatory bowel disease, immuno-oncology and autoimmune diseases, and future potential programmes,” Microba’s Senior Vice President – Therapeutics, Professor Trent Munro, said.
“Our previous research has identified new microorganisms associated with a range of other human diseases, and the AHMB will significantly enhance our ability to rapidly translate these findings into new therapies.”
The human microbiome represents a rich biological resource, but our ability to isolate, grow and characterise most microorganisms in the laboratory remains limited. This is a major obstacle in microbiome research and therapeutic development, as culturing individual species is critical for dissecting microbial mechanisms underpinning human health and disease.
In the MRFF funded programme, QUT in collaboration with Microba will overcome this obstacle by building Australia’s first atmosphere-controlled, high-throughput cultivation platform, which integrates novel methods in spectral flow cytometry and metagenomics. This innovative approach will be applied to a diverse range of microbial communities throughout the human body, including the gut, skin, vaginal and oral microbiome, resulting in the world’s most comprehensive biobank of its kind.
The programme will be led by CMR Director Professor Gene Tyson at QUT, and human microbiome samples will be analysed using Microba’s world leading metagenomic technology to identify species of interest for targeted research.