Faculty Bibliography

Antibiotic-induced microbiome injury, defined as a reduction of ecological diversity and obligate anaerobe taxa, is associated with negative health outcomes in hospitalized patients, and healthy individuals who received antibiotics in the past are at higher risk for autoimmune diseases. Postbiotics contain mixtures of bacterial fermentation metabolites and bacterial cell wall components that have the potential to modulate microbial communities. Yet, it is unknown if a fermentation-derived postbiotic can reduce antibiotic-induced microbiome injury. Here, we present the results from a single-center, randomized placebo-controlled trial involving 32 patients who received an oral, fermentation-derived postbiotic alongside oral antibiotic and probiotic therapy for non-gastrointestinal (GI) infections. At the end of the antibiotic course, patients receiving the postbiotic (n = 16) had significantly higher fecal bacterial alpha diversity (+40%, inverse Simpson index) compared to the placebo group (n = 16), and the treatment was well-tolerated. Analysis of 157 longitudinal fecal samples revealed that this increased diversity was driven by enrichment of health-associated taxa, notably obligate anaerobic Firmicutes, particularly Lachnospiraceae. In contrast, Escherichia/Shigella species, often linked to pathogenicity and antibiotic resistance, were reduced in postbiotic-treated patients at the end of antibiotic treatment and remained lower up to 10 days later. Our findings suggest that postbiotic co-administration during antibiotic therapy may augment health-associated gut microbiome composition and mitigate antibiotic-induced microbiome injury.Trial registration ISRCTN30327931 retrospectively registered.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVE:The functional composition and diversity of the gut microbiome may affect breast cancer risk by modulation of systemic sex hormones. Gut bacteria with β-glucuronidase enzymatic activity may deconjugate estrogens, leading to increased estrogen reabsorption into the circulation thereby increasing breast cancer risk. We investigated the relationship between the gut bacterial microbiome and endogenous estrogens and related sex hormones in women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer compared to healthy control women. The goal was to determine if the estrobolome (i.e., bacteria capable of modulating the body's circulated estrogen levels) was altered in those with breast cancer compared with controls. METHODS:In this prospective case-control study, postmenopausal women (n = 46) with newly diagnosed stage I-III estrogen and/or progesterone receptor-positive breast cancer were compared with healthy postmenopausal female controls (n = 22). Bacterial composition of the gut microbiome was analyzed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing from fecal specimens. Plasma and urine sex hormones were quantified using high-performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. RESULTS:We found evidence that some β-glucuronidase positive bacteria were enriched in the breast cancer patients compared to healthy controls, whereas abundances of some β-glucuronidase negative bacteria were reduced. There was also a wide distribution of prevalence of β-glucuronidase positive taxa in both breast cancer subjects and healthy controls, as well as higher probability of breast cancer subjects having higher average β-glucuronidase levels. Significant differences were found in endogenous progesterone levels between the breast cancer patients and healthy controls. CONCLUSION/CONCLUSIONS:This pilot study showed differences in the gut microbiome and endogenous progesterone levels among postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer compared with healthy controls. These interesting findings may have implications for breast cancer risk and prevention and warrant further exploration.

Bacteriophages are the most abundant and phylogenetically diverse biological entities on Earth, yet the ecological mechanisms that sustain this extraordinary diversity remain unclear. In this study, we discovered that phage diversity consistently outstripped the diversity of their bacterial hosts under simple experimental conditions. We assembled and passaged dozens of diverse phage communities on a single, nonevolving strain of Escherichia coli until the phage communities reached equilibrium. In all cases, we found that two or more phage species coexisted stably, despite competition for a single, clonal host population. Phage coexistence was supported through host phenotypic heterogeneity, whereby bacterial cells adopting different growth phenotypes served as niches for different phage species. Our experiments reveal that a rich community ecology of bacteriophages can emerge on a single bacterial host.

Due to the development of next-generation sequencing technology and an increased appreciation of their role in modulating host immunity and their potential as therapeutic agents, the human microbiome has emerged as a key area of interest in various biological investigations of human health and disease. However, microbiome data present a number of statistical challenges not addressed by existing methods, such as the varying sequencing depth, the compositionality, and zero inflation. Solutions like scaling and transformation methods help to mitigate heterogeneity and release constraints, but often introduce biases and yield inconsistent results on the same data. To address these issues, we conduct a systematic review of compositional data transformation, with a particular focus on the connection and distinction of existing techniques. Additionally, we create a new framework that enables the development of new transformations by combining proportion conversion with contrast transformations. This framework includes well-known methods such as Additive Log Ratio (ALR) and Centered Log Ratio (CLR) as special cases. Using this framework, we develop two novel transformations-Centered Arcsine Contrast (CAC) and Additive Arcsine Contrast (AAC)-which show enhanced performance in scenarios with high zero-inflation. Moreover, our findings suggest that ALR and CLR transformations are more effective when zero values are less prevalent. This comprehensive review and the innovative framework provide microbiome researchers with a significant direction to enhance data transformation procedures and improve analytical outcomes.

Longitudinal microbiome data provide valuable insight into disease states and clinical responses, but they are challenging to mine and view collectively. To address these limitations, we present TaxUMAP, a taxonomically informed visualization for displaying microbiome states in large clinical microbiome datasets. We used TaxUMAP to chart a microbiome atlas of 1,870 patients with cancer during therapy-induced perturbations. Bacterial density and diversity were positively associated, but the trend was reversed in liquid stool. Low-diversity states (dominations) remained stable after antibiotic treatment, and diverse communities had a broader range of antimicrobial resistance genes than dominations. When examining microbiome states associated with risk for bacteremia, TaxUMAP revealed that certain Klebsiella species were associated with lower risk for bacteremia localize in a region of the atlas that is depleted in high-risk enterobacteria. This indicated a competitive interaction that was validated experimentally. Thus, TaxUMAP can chart comprehensive longitudinal microbiome datasets, enabling insights into microbiome effects on human health.

Although microbial populations in the gut microbiome are associated with COVID-19 severity, a causal impact on patient health has not been established. Here we provide evidence that gut microbiome dysbiosis is associated with translocation of bacteria into the blood during COVID-19, causing life-threatening secondary infections. We first demonstrate SARS-CoV-2 infection induces gut microbiome dysbiosis in mice, which correlated with alterations to Paneth cells and goblet cells, and markers of barrier permeability. Samples collected from 96 COVID-19 patients at two different clinical sites also revealed substantial gut microbiome dysbiosis, including blooms of opportunistic pathogenic bacterial genera known to include antimicrobial-resistant species. Analysis of blood culture results testing for secondary microbial bloodstream infections with paired microbiome data indicates that bacteria may translocate from the gut into the systemic circulation of COVID-19 patients. These results are consistent with a direct role for gut microbiome dysbiosis in enabling dangerous secondary infections during COVID-19.

Background/UNASSIGNED:The epidemiology of nosocomial bloodstream infections (NBSIs) in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is poorly understood, due in part to substantial disease heterogeneity resulting from multiple potential pathogens. Methods/UNASSIGNED:We identified risk factors for NBSIs and examined the association between NBSIs and mortality in a retrospective cohort of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in 2 New York City hospitals during the height of the pandemic. We adjusted for the potential effects of factors likely to confound that association, including age, race, illness severity upon admission, and underlying health status. Results/UNASSIGNED:infections did not have an identifiable source and were not associated with common risk factors for infection by these organisms. Conclusions/UNASSIGNED:Pathogen species and mortality exhibited temporal differences. Early recognition of risk factors among COVID-19 patients could potentially decrease NBSI-associated mortality through early COVID-19 and antimicrobial treatment.

Anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has led to unprecedented responses in patients with high-risk hematologic malignancies. However, up to 60% of patients still experience disease relapse and up to 80% of patients experience CAR-mediated toxicities, such as cytokine release syndrome or immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome. We investigated the role of the intestinal microbiome on these outcomes in a multicenter study of patients with B cell lymphoma and leukemia. We found in a retrospective cohort (n = 228) that exposure to antibiotics, in particular piperacillin/tazobactam, meropenem and imipenem/cilastatin (P-I-M), in the 4 weeks before therapy was associated with worse survival and increased neurotoxicity. In stool samples from a prospective cohort of CAR T cell recipients (n = 48), the fecal microbiome was altered at baseline compared to healthy controls. Stool sample profiling by 16S ribosomal RNA and metagenomic shotgun sequencing revealed that clinical outcomes were associated with differences in specific bacterial taxa and metabolic pathways. Through both untargeted and hypothesis-driven analysis of 16S sequencing data, we identified species within the class Clostridia that were associated with day 100 complete response. We concluded that changes in the intestinal microbiome are associated with clinical outcomes after anti-CD19 CAR T cell therapy in patients with B cell malignancies.

Background Intestinal microbiome disruption is a risk factor for poor outcomes after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT), but the factors that contribute to microbiome injury are not well understood. We hypothesized that nutrition contributes to microbiome composition during allo-HCT. Methods Along with 16S profiling of collected fecal samples, we monitored daily inpatient nutritional intake using a customized real-time survey instrument. Data were quality-controlled by a dietitian and matched to the Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies (FNDDS). Results 97 adult patients received conditioning regimens that were 68% ablative, 22% reduced, and 10% nonmyeloablative; 35% patients had acute myeloid leukemia and 35% had myelodysplastic/myeloproliferative neoplasms, while 10% had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Grafts were T-cell depleted in 49% and cord blood in 7%. The remaining had unmodified bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cell. 5 patients had enteral nutrition during the treatment. 22,614 food entries from 5,230 meals were collected during inpatient admissions. Among 800 sequenced stool samples, 329 were collected following exposure to an empiric antibiotic. The hierarchical organization of the FNDDS vocabulary facilitated application of alpha and beta diversities to diet data, as well as analysis of food items (e.g., chicken), which have been reported to more closely associate with microbiome composition than macronutrients (e.g., fat). Nutritional diversity declined from admission until day 3 (A). Clusters of dietary patterns were revealed by ordination with unweighted UniFrac distance applied, in which highly diverse diets clustered together (B). We observed a correlation between total calories consumed and fecal alpha diversity (r = 0.23, P < 0.001) and the relative fecal abundance of the genus Blautia (r = 0.31, P < 0.001), which we have previously associated with protection from lethal graft versus host disease (GVHD). In contrast, calorie intake was inversely associated with the fecal relative abundance of genus Enterococcus (r = -0.15, P < 0.001), a genus we have reported exacerbates GVHD. Similar associations with microbiome features were observed for fiber. To gain insight into which types of foods are associated with microbiome injury, we constructed a Bayesian multilevel model to evaluate relationships between microbiota diversity and the amount consumed of different food groups in the two days preceding each stool sample. This model controlled for conditioning intensity, exposure to empiric antibiotics, enteral nutrition, and total parenteral nutrition. Empiric antibiotics refer to the ones for neutropenic fever such as piperacillin/tazobactam, carbapenems, cefepime, linezolid and for C. difficile such as oral vancomycin, and metronidazole. A random intercept term per patient to accommodate repeated measurements from the same patient and a random intercept term for each week relative to HCT were incorporated in the model. Intake of sugars, sweets and beverages was associated with low fecal microbiota alpha diversity (C). The model predicts that, on average, consumption of 100g sugars and sweets over two days would result in a biologically meaningful decline of diversity by 1.13-fold in inverse Simpson units. Interestingly, fruits, a food type enriched in simple sugars, trended toward associations with lower diversity as well. Conclusion Consumption of sugars and sweets is associated with lower fecal microbiota alpha diversity in allo-HCT. We hypothesize that initial insults to diverse microbial communities are exacerbated by simple sugars, which can be exploited by the remaining organisms as readily available nutrients. These results highlight the importance of developing evidence-based nutritional recommendations in allo-HCT. [Formula presented] Disclosures: Adintori: Vidafuel Inc.: Current holder of stock options in a privately-held company. Buchan: Savor Health: Current Employment. Gomes: Xbiome: Current Employment. Johnson: Diversigen: Consultancy. Knights: Diversigen: Consultancy. Jenq: Microbiome DX: Consultancy; Merck: Consultancy; Prolacta: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Kaleido: Consultancy, Current holder of stock options in a privately-held company, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding; Seres: Consultancy, Current holder of stock options in a privately-held company, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Patents & Royalties, Research Funding; LisCure: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; MaaT Pharma: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Karius: Consultancy. Giralt: GSK: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; PFIZER: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; SANOFI: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; JAZZ: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; AMGEN: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; JENSENN: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; BMS: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; CELGENE: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Actinnum: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Perales: NexImmune: Honoraria; Servier: Honoraria; MorphoSys: Honoraria; Novartis: Honoraria, Other; Nektar Therapeutics: Honoraria, Other; Miltenyi Biotec: Honoraria, Other; Merck: Honoraria; Medigene: Honoraria; Takeda: Honoraria; Sellas Life Sciences: Honoraria; Kite/Gilead: Honoraria, Other; Karyopharm: Honoraria; Incyte: Honoraria, Other; Equilium: Honoraria; Cidara: Honoraria; Celgene: Honoraria; Bristol-Myers Squibb: Honoraria; Omeros: Honoraria. van den Brink: Priothera: Research Funding; Da Volterra: Other: has consulted, received honorarium from or participated in advisory boards; Jazz Pharmaceuticals: Honoraria; Pharmacyclics: Other; Seres: Other: Honorarium, Intellectual Property Rights, Research Fundingand Stock Options; Wolters Kluwer: Patents & Royalties; Pluto Therapeutics: Current holder of stock options in a privately-held company, Other: has consulted, received honorarium from or participated in advisory boards; Amgen: Honoraria; Frazier Healthcare Partners: Honoraria; Forty-Seven, Inc.: Honoraria; Notch Therapeutics: Honoraria; Nektar Therapeutics: Honoraria; GlaskoSmithKline: Other: has consulted, received honorarium from or participated in advisory boards; Kite Pharmaceuticals: Other; Novartis (Spouse): Other: has consulted, received honorarium from or participated in advisory boards; Juno Therapeutics: Other; MagentaTherapeutics: Honoraria; Ceramedix: Other: has consulted, received honorarium from or participated in advisory boards; Rheos: Honoraria; DKMS (nonprofit): Other; Therakos: Honoraria; Merck & Co, Inc: Honoraria; Synthekine (Spouse): Other: has consulted, received honorarium from or participated in advisory boards; Lygenesis: Other: has consulted, received honorarium from or participated in advisory boards; WindMILTherapeutics: Honoraria. Schluter: Postbiotics Plus LLC: Other: cofounder. Peled: MaaT Pharma: Consultancy; CSL Behring: Consultancy; DaVolterra: Consultancy; Seres Therapeutics: Research Funding.
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