Microbiome manipulation for health: building a shared narrative

Anastasia is a clinical academic trainee specialising in Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Her research focuses on the early life microbiome, including the world’s first perinatal human challenge model, using nasal inoculation with commensal Neisseria in pregnant women to study microbiome transmission in mother-infant pairs. She is passionate about the role of the microbiome in novel therapeutics and antimicrobial stewardship.

Lindsay Hall is the Chair of Microbiome Research at the University of Birmingham since 2023. She obtained a BSc in Microbiology from the University of Glasgow and a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Cambridge (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute).

Her postdoctoral fellowship at the APC Microbiome Institute at University College Cork, Ireland, kindled her deep interest in gut-associated microbial communities. Subsequently, she took on her first independent role as a lecturer at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, where she and her new team honed their focus on the gut microbiota, particularly during early life.

In 2015, Professor Hall moved to the Quadram Institute in Norwich, where the team's research expanded significantly. They established clinical cohort studies that advanced knowledge of the role of the gut microbiota in human health. Alongside research, she engaged with the public through outreach and educational initiatives, centred around the theme of 'Guardians of the Gut'.

Before joining the University of Birmingham, she held the position of Chair of Intestinal Microbiome at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Here, she continued her team's pioneering work in beneficial microbes and developed innovative therapies to enhance infant health.

Jamie Lorimer’s research explores public understandings of nature and how these come to shape health and environmental governance. Past projects have explored the histories, politics and cultures of nature recovery, ranging across scales from elephants to the microbiome. He uses participatory and ethnographic methods to engage publics in research practices. His current work examines the probiotic turn that is underway in important parts of the Western world in which citizens and scientists are using life to manage life: reintroducing species and managing ecologies to deliver desired functions and services. This probiotic turn is a response to the blowback caused by the excessive application of antibiotic modes of managing life in the Anthropocene. It can be detected across spatial scales from the microbial to the planetary. In the context of the microbiome, it is evident in ongoing efforts to recalibrate modern hygiene practices and to conserve and restore valued microbiota.

Beth Greenhough’s research explores the social implications of scientific innovations in the areas of health, biomedicine and the environment. Employing a range of participatory, ethnographic and archival methods, Beth seeks to understand the social, cultural and ethical processes which shape how publics and patients engage with biomedical research. Previous work has explored the ethics of biobanking, factors shaping breast cancer awareness and cultures of care in animal research. Her current work looks to develop collaborative and participatory approaches to public engagements with key emerging issues in health and wellbeing, including the impacts of industrial pollution, patient experiences of Long Covid and lay engagements with the human microbiome. She is co-author of Bioinformation (Polity, 2017) and Researching Animal Research (Manchester University Press, 2024).

Tim Spector is a Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King's College London and honorary consultant Physician at Guys and St Thomas' Hospitals. He is also an expert in personalised medicine and the gut microbiome and started the famous UK Twin Registry in 1993. Through his work he has been given many awards and prizes, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and the Academy of Medical sciences. He has published over 900 scientific papers and is ranked by Google as being in the top 120 most cited scientists in the world. He has published four popular books- including the best-selling Diet Myth and recently Spoon-Fed, he writes health blogs, which have been read by ten million people and appears regularly on the TV and Media round the world.

Professor Dr E J Kuijper previously led the Experimental Microbiology division and the Reference Laboratory for Clostridioides difficile at Leiden University Medical Centre, as well as the Centre for Infectious Disease Control at the National Institute of Public Health. In 2015, he co-founded the National Donor Feces Bank for patient treatment, followed by the establishment of the Centre for Microbiota Analysis and Therapeutics in 2017. Dr Kuijper has authored over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Until 2016, he served as president of the European Study Group on Clostridium difficile (ESCGD) of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID). Since 2018, he has chaired the ESCMID Study Group on Host and Microbiota Interactions (ESGHAMI).

Sarah Lebeer is the principal investigator and head of the Laboratory of Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology at the University of Antwerp since 2011. She studies the microbiome of the gut, vaina and upper respiratory tract and is especially fascinated by the beneficial members of our microbiome such as lactobacilli and how we can apply them as probiotics or live biotherapeutic products.  She obtained her Masters in Bioscience Engineering in Cell and Gene Technology (2004) and PhD (2008) within the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering of the KU Leuven. She is the vice president of the International Scientific Association on Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) and coordinator of a Centre of Excellence (named U-MaMi) on ‘Advancing Health Equity Through Microbiome-Centric and Multidisciplinary Research’. She is also involved in several citizen-science projects such as the Isala project on women’s health.