Gut flora important in drug discovery
Individual and species variations in gut microbial activity will need to be considered in order to develop personalised drug therapies, according to the authors of a review paper.
Jeremy Nicholson, Imperial College London, and colleagues summarise the
evidence which shows that gut micro-organisms interact with their host
to influence disease activity and drug metabolism and toxicity.
Humans and gut micro-organisms have evolved together and the authors
say that, given the geographical distribution and range of diets consumed,
it is likely that there is considerable variation in gut micro-organisms
and parasites within and between populations and individuals. They suggest
that this leads to a potentially unpredictable diversity in the overall
metabolism of a drug. “[This diversity] might be a factor in the
adverse drug reactions that sometimes cause withdrawal of a product from
the market because of the unforeseen side effects in certain individuals,” they
say.
Ian Wilson from the department of drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics,
AstraZeneca, and one of the authors of the paper, highlights the importance
of gut micro-organisms in the drug discovery and development process. “This
growing realisation that the gut microflora may have effects that cannot
be predicted from the patient’s genome alone adds an extra layer
of complexity to the way in which we carry out drug discovery. At the
moment, when developing a new drug, we take little account of factors
such as the microflora and this may need to change.” (Published
online on
8 April in Nature Reviews Microbiology) |
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