OpenBiome

OpenBiome
FocusHealth
Location
  • Massachusetts
Chief Executive Officer
Julie Barrett O'Brien
Websitewww.openbiome.org

OpenBiome is a nonprofit health research organization based in Massachusetts accelerating research on the human microbiome. They partner with leading researchers, clinicians and innovators to advance and ensure access to novel and affordable microbiome therapeutics.

History

OpenBiome distributes material to hospitals and clinics to support the treatment of C. difficile, the most common pathogen causing hospital-acquired infection in the U.S.[1] OpenBiome provides frozen preparations of screened and filtered human stool for use in fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) therapies. In collaboration with their manufacturing partners at the University of Minnesota, OpenBiome provides clinicians with two different liquid formulations of fecal microbiota: MTP101-LR, to treat recurrent C. difficile infection unresponsive to standard therapies, and MTP101-LF, a high-dose formulation intended to treat severe-fulminant C. difficile. As of February 2024, OpenBiome had provided over 70,000 treatments to all 50 states.[2]

OpenBiome was founded in 2012 by Mark Smith, a microbiology student at MIT, and James Burgess, an MBA student at the MIT Sloan School of Management.[3] It is the first public stool bank, and was founded to facilitate use of FMT.[4] The logistical burdens associated with screening and processing fecal material have made it difficult for clinicians to offer FMT to patients with recurrent C. difficile infections.[5]

References

  1. ^ Magill, SS; Edwards, JR; Bamberg, W; Beldavs, ZG; Dumyati, G; Kainer, MA; Lynfield, R; Maloney, M; McAllister-Hollod, L; Nadle, J; Ray, SM; Thompson, DL; Wilson, LE; Fridkin, SK (27 Mar 2014). "Multistate point-prevalence survey of health care-associated infections". N Engl J Med. 370 (13): 1198–1208. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1306801. PMC 4648343. PMID 24670166.
  2. ^ Gastroenterology, Healio; January 2017. "Onsite with OpenBiome". www.healio.com. Retrieved 13 January 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ Glenn, David (3 Feb 2014). "Student-led Project Banks on Promise of Fecal Transplants". The Chronicle for Higher Education. Retrieved 14 July 2014.
  4. ^ Smith, Peter Andrey (17 Feb 2014). "A New Kind of Transplant Bank". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 July 2014.
  5. ^ Johnson, Carolyn (24 Feb 2014). "Fecal transplant safety is goal of stool bank". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 14 July 2014.