SBIR Phase I: Harnessing Untapped Food-borne Microbial Diversity to Rationally Engineer Novel Healthy Foods

这个SBIR项目的更广泛的商业影响是验证开发一种新型发酵食品的技术和商业可行性，以解决与肠易激综合征(IBS)相关的潜在机制。IBS是一种高度破坏性和流行性的疾病，困扰着大约3200万美国人。从技术上讲，将首次验证合理设计具有特定菌种含量和特定健康和营养益处的新型发酵食品的能力。在商业上，消费者的口味和接受度也将得到验证，以确保市场对该产品的强劲需求。如果成功，这项提议将更广泛地验证一种新的平台，用于设计具有各种理想特性的合理发酵食品，包括改善健康和营养质量，更牢固的保存，以及有针对性地去除特定化合物/毒素。虽然最初的疾病目标是IBS，但还有许多其他与微生物组有很强关联的慢性疾病；这些疾病现在占美国医疗保健支出的90%(近4万亿美元)，是该平台可能对国内外产生强大影响的迫切创新领域。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目提议开发一个新平台，精确设计具有定义的微生物和代谢物含量的新型发酵食品，以改善人类健康。发酵食品很有希望通过各种既定的机制影响宿主肠道和微生物群，并具有高代谢活性微生物剂量的优势，以及运送多个菌株及其相关生物活性代谢物的能力。然而，一个关键的技术障碍是，目前还不可能准确定义发酵食品的菌株和代谢物含量。这项建议通过利用微生物菌株分离、基因组特征和高通量筛选方面的最新进展来应对这一挑战。首先，下一代菌株分离技术将被应用于食源性微生物，以开发一个大型的、具有深刻特征的生物库，其中包括以前无法接触到的微生物菌株。然后将对这些菌株进行筛选，以确定其在特定宿主和微生物组机制上的活性。然后，铅菌株将被制成商业规模的食品，并将确认这些菌株的存在以及它们相关的健康特性的保留。最后，品味档案将得到验证。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader/commercial impact of this SBIR project is to validate the technical and commercial viability of developing a novel fermented food to address underlying mechanisms associated with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). IBS is a highly disruptive and prevalent disease afflicting approximately 32 million Americans. Technically, the ability to rationally design a novel fermented food with defined strain content and specific health and nutritional benefits will be validated for the first time. Commercially, the taste and acceptability for consumers will also be verified to ensure strong market demand for the product. If successful, this proposal will more broadly validate a novel platform for designing rationally fermented foods with a variety of desirable properties, including improved health and nutritional qualities, more robust preservation, and targeted removal of specific compounds/toxins. Although the initial disease target is IBS, there are many other chronic diseases with strong associative links to the microbiome; these now constitute 90% of U.S. health care spending (nearly $4 trillion) and present an urgent area for innovation that this platform could powerfully impact, both domestically and abroad.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project proposes to develop a new platform to precisely engineer novel fermented foods with defined microbial and metabolite content to improve human health. Fermented foods have great promise to impact the host gut and microbiome through a variety of established mechanisms, and have the advantage of high, metabolically active doses of microbes and the ability to deliver multiple strains along with their associated bioactive metabolites. However, a key technical hurdle is that it is not currently possible to precisely define the strain and metabolite content of a fermented food. This proposal addresses this challenge by leveraging recent advances in microbial strain isolation, genomic characterization and high throughput screening. First, next-generation strain isolation techniques will be applied to food-borne microbes to develop a large and deeply characterized biobank of previously inaccessible microbial strains. The strains will then be screened for activity on specific host and microbiome mechanisms. Lead strains will then be formulated into a food at commercial scale, and the presence of the strains as well as retention of their associated health properties will be confirmed. Finally, the taste profile will be validated.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.