Next-Generation Beneficial Microbes: The Case of Akkermansia muciniphila

By Patrice D Cani, W. D. de Vos. Frontiers in Microbiology, 2017

883 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Metabolic disorders associated with obesity and cardiometabolic disorders are worldwide epidemic. Among the different environmental factors, the gut microbiota is now considered as a key player interfering with energy metabolism and host susceptibility to several non-communicable diseases. Among the next-generation beneficial microbes that have been identified, Akkermansia muciniphila is a promising candidate. Indeed, A. muciniphila is inversely associated with obesity, diabetes, cardiometabolic diseases and low-grade inflammation. Besides the numerous correlations observed, a large body of evidence has demonstrated the causal beneficial impact of this bacterium in a variety of preclinical models. Translating these exciting observations to human would be the next logic step and it now appears that several obstacles that would prevent the use of A. muciniphila administration in humans have been overcome. Moreover, several lines of evidence indicate that pasteurization of A. muciniphila not only increases its stability but more importantly increases its efficacy. This strongly positions A. muciniphila in the forefront of next-generation candidates for developing novel food or pharma supplements with beneficial effects. Finally, a specific protein present on the outer membrane of A. muciniphila, termed Amuc_1100, could be strong candidate for future drug development. In conclusion, as plants and its related knowledge, known as pharmacognosy, have been the source for designing drugs over the last century, we propose that microbes and microbiomegnosy, or knowledge of our gut microbiome, can become a novel source of future therapies.

Subfields: Food Science, Infectious Diseases, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f7bebc652969cf23e4f447d5c4f2618422a5ee88

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Food Science

1. Lei Cheng
2. Faming Zhang
3. H. Buch
4. Qianqian Li
5. Ting Zhang

In Molecular Biology

1. T. Wyss‐Coray
2. J. Rutledge
3. H. Oh
4. Lei Cheng
5. Faming Zhang
6. H. Buch
7. Qianqian Li
8. Ting Zhang

Citations in the corpus

• Akkermansia muciniphila is a promising probiotic (2019, background): “Due to this unique function and its high universality and richness in almost all life stages, A. muciniphila has opened new avenues for the application in next-generation therapeutic probiotics (Collado et al., 2007; Derrien et al., 2008; Belzer and de Vos, 2012; Cani and de Vos, 2017).”
• Measuring biological age using omics data (2022, background): “…that gut microbiome composition changes with age, that exceptionally long-lived individuals have a different microbiome composition from average older adults 131–133 , and that certain microorganisms 131,134,135 and the metabolites they produce 132,134,136 are beneficial to human health.”