Marcel van de Wouw, PhD, Program Director, Microbiome at the Weston Family Foundation, told attendees in Vancouver Tuesday that the C$37 million granting program, spread over seven years, will advance new microbiome-based interventions with convincing preclinical data towards clinical trials.
The Foundation has been active in the microbiome space since 2017, but the new Microbiome Innovations for New Therapies (MINT) program represents the largest granting envelope that it has established to-date.
“Clinical studies are not cheap, and to really do them well, ideally aspiring for that pharma-grade clinical trial, that what we’re hearing the field is really looking for,” said Dr. van de Wouw.
Leveraging the tool kit
Describing the microbiome as a “special ecosystem”, he added that the microbiome also directly interacts with our biology, and that there are is an established tool kit of microbiome modulators, such as probiotics, prebiotics, symbiotic, postbiotic, fecal microbiome transplants, and bacteriophages.
“This is so exciting,” he said, “because it’s sort of in this sweet spot of environmental factors, strong relevance to disease and pathobiology, but also you have so many tools in which you can really, that you can really utilize and leverage to improve human health.”
Beginning in September, MINT is agnostic about the type of microbiome intervention that would qualify, said Dr. van de Wouw.
“For us, really, it’s around, give us your best pitch, what microbiome intervention you’re hoping to push forward towards clinical trials, and try to convince us to what extent is that going to be a game changer to improve health and wellbeing,” he said. “And we’re a Canadian philanthropic family organization really, so what’s really core and central to our belief is that we want to leverage the microbiome to improve health and wellbeing of Canadians as well, so that the families that we live with, the communities that we are in.”
However, the opportunities offered by MINT will extend beyond Canada, he said.
“At the end of the day, the Canadian landscape is not as vast, especially in terms of its market size. So, pragmatically speaking, for a microbiome intervention, a company to be successful, they also probably need to target the US, Europe, and other demographics, so it’s really then around really ensuring that these innovations that you support have that impact in the Canadian ecosystem, but also, how can we support them to be set them up to really be as successful as they can be?”
For more information, watch the full interview in the video.
