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Stool Bank Announces Personalized Microbiome Banking for C. difficile
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The nonprofit public stool bank, OpenBiome, has announced a new pilot program called PersonalBiome, which will allow individuals to bank a cryogenically preserved sample of their own healthy microbiome for use in a fecal microbiota transplant should they acquire a recurrent Clostridium difficile infection in the future.
“We’re thrilled to offer OpenBiome’s bio-banking services to individuals for their personal use,” James Burgess, co‐founder and executive director of OpenBiome, said in a press release. “While we remain committed to treating patients with recurrent C. difficile following our universal donor model, we are pleased to respond to growing demand for a service that allows individuals to undergo FMT treatment with their own unique microbial communities.”
While OpenBiome has traditionally provided rigorously screened donor stool for FMTs to treat patients with recurrent C. difficile infection, “there may be advantages to repopulating an individual’s gut with their own healthy microbial community, withdrawn from their PersonalBiome bank,” according to the press release. Participants will also be eligible to receive customized screening, sequencing, consultation, processing, encapsulation and cryopreservation services, and interested parties are currently invited to schedule a consultation.
Since its founding in 2012, OpenBiome has expanded safe access to FMT by providing over 7,000 treatments to more than 400 clinical partners in six countries, and has supported 10 clinical and translational research studies, according to the press release.
Disclosures: Burgess reports he is an employee of OpenBiome.