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A primer on why microbiome research is hard
6.3k words, 29 minutes reading time
But, with the discovery of H. Pylori’s role in causing peptic ulcers and the subsequently awarded 2005 Nobel Prize in medicine for it, the microbiome began to be viewed differently: something that is intertwined with the neurological, immunological, and metabolic health of its host. Therefore, despite numerous, high-impact, peer-reviewed research papers that either validated our conclusions or extended them using data we released we carefully considered criticism raised by Gihawi et al. about potential mishandling of contaminants, batch effects, and machine learning approaches… I could hand-wave about how we need larger, multi-center, randomized controlled trials, which are expensive, and companies may not see enough value to invest, but I believe there’s a less scientific/clinical reason why FMT for neurological development has stalled: you technically cannot patent FMT-based therapeutics, since it is a ‘living organism’, just like cell lines.
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