ProDigest and CosmosID Announce a Winner for the 'Gut Microbiome Therapeutic Innovation' Challenge

GHENT, Belgium and ROCKVILLE, Md., May 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ProDigest and CosmosID announce today the winner of the GMTI challenge. The El Aidy lab from the university of Groningen, won the challenge with their submitted research plan to investigate the "Role of anti-Parkinson's Disease (PD) medication in enhancing bacterial overgrowth and community dynamics along the gastrointestinal tract." The project will be conducted on ProDigest's gastrointestinal SHIME^® platform. Upon intake of anti-PD medication, the shifts in the microbial saccharolytic and proteolytic activity will be measured, and the taxonomic and functional modulation of the gut microbiota will be assessed by sequencing and analysis with CosmosID's industry-leading microbiome analysis pipeline.

"We were very enthusiastic about the response from companies and universities. We received almost 50 submissions from all corners of the world. The decision was not an easy one," said Dr. Pieter Van den Abbeele, CSO of ProDigest and part of the reviewing committee. Manoj Dadlani, CEO of CosmosID, commented: "Professor El Aidy's proposed study touches on two exciting areas of research; the Gut-Brain Axis as well as pharmacomicrobiomics. Studies like this are crucial for understanding how drugs are metabolised, the link between the microbiome and patient response as well as investigating prevalent gastrointestinal side effects associated with many medications in this area of medicine."

"I am very delighted to have received the joint SHIME/CosmosID pre-clinical study award," said professor Sahar El Aidy "Together with the advanced microbiome sequencing technology at CosmosID, the highly developed compartmentalization of the SHIME in vitro model that ProDigest provides, would be ideal for us to study pre-clinical effects of anti-PD medication on the gut microbial community and how this, in turn, impacts the level of drug absorbed in the upper intestinal tract."

More details can be found on the CosmosID blog.

Contacts

For ProDigest:
Aurélien Baudot
+32 9 241 11 90
[email protected]

For CosmosID:
Kelly Moffat
+1 703 995 9879
[email protected]

SOURCE CosmosID