Life Sciences Seminar - Fecal microbiota transplantation

Fecal microbiota transplantation: the role of the stool donor in treating C. difficile and other diseasesDr. Scott OlesenScientific DirectorOpenBiomeAbstract:Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), the transfer of stool from a healthy donor into an ill person's gut, is a medically-recommended treatment for Clostridioides difficile infection and is being explored as a treatment for dozens of other diseases. Although stool is ubiquitous, safety and quality assurance requirements make medical-grade stool donors relatively difficult to find. Furthermore, person-to-person variations in stool --itself a complex mixture of microbes, small molecules, and macromolecules-- raise key questions about whether all stool can be expected to treat all diseases in all patients equally well. I review anecdotal reports of particularly effective donors in the scientific literature, the popular concept of "super-donors", and outline statistically rigorous evaluations of the extant evidence for "donor effects."Speaker Bio:Dr. Olesen is the Scientific Director at OpenBiome, a non-profit stool bank based in Boston. OpenBiome provides material for fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) for use in treating C. difficile infection and for research purposes. His key research interests are antimicrobial resistance and microbiome science. Dr. Olesen completed postdoctoral training with Yonatan Grad at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, where he focused on antimicrobial resistance. He completed his PhD with Eric Alm at MIT, where he worked in environmental microbiology, human microbiome science, and clinical trial design. At MIT, Dr. Olesen was a founding member of MIT’s Biological Engineering Communciation Lab, where he co-led the development of the first CommKit, a guide to communication tasks designed by scientists for scientists. He was also a founding member of the MIT Biological Engineering REFS, a peer-to-peer conflict management and mentoring program, and a Diversity Chair on the department’s graduate student board. During his postdoc, he served as the President of the Harvard Chan Postdoc Association and served on the School’s Committee for Diversity and Inclusion.Intended Audience:Beginners, undergraduates, graduates. Those with interest in the topic.