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. 2024 Dec 31;4(1):e265.
doi: 10.1002/imt2.265. eCollection 2025 Feb.

Gut microbiota in treating inflammatory digestive diseases: Current challenges and therapeutic opportunities

Yongpeng Shi  1   2   3 , Zeran Chen  4 , Tingyu Fang  2   3 , Xingyao Chen  2   3 , Youpeng Deng  2   3 , Hao Qin  5 , Min Lian  6 , Juntao Shen  7 , Yuru Zong  4 , Huikuan Chu  8 , Constanze Hoebinger  9 , Hao Guo  10 , Zhongshang Yuan  11 , Jie Zheng  12   13   14 , Yongjian Zhou  15 , Yue Pan  16   17 , Beatriz G Mendes  18 , Sonja Lang  19 , Tim Hendrikx  9 , Suling Zeng  20 , Hailong Cao  21 , Ling Yang  8 , Lianmin Chen  22 , Peng Chen  23   24 , Lei Dai  7 , Hua Wang  25   26 , Shi Yin  27   28 , Shu Zhu  2   3 , Xiong Ma  6 , Bernd Schnabl  29 , Hanqing Chen  4 , Yi Duan  1   2   3
Affiliations

Gut microbiota in treating inflammatory digestive diseases: Current challenges and therapeutic opportunities

Yongpeng Shi et al. Imeta. .

Abstract

Accumulating evidence indicates that the gut microbiota is intricately involved in the initiation and progression of human diseases, forming a multidirectional regulatory axis centered on intestinal microbiota. This article illustrates the challenges in exploring the role of the gut microbiota in inflammatory digestive diseases, such as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and summarizes the existing microbiome-focused treatment strategies (probiotics, prebiotics, symbiotics, fecal microbiota transplantation, and bacteriophages therapy), emerging technologies (gut microbiome-on-a-chip and artificial intelligence), as well as possible future research directions. Taken together, these therapeutic strategies and technologies present both opportunities and challenges, which require researchers and clinicians to test the rationality and feasibility of various therapeutic modalities in continuous practice.

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Conflict of interest statement

Bernd Schnabl has been consulting for Ambys Medicines, Ferring Research Institute, Gelesis, HOST Therabiomics, Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Mabwell Therapeutics, Patara Pharmaceuticals, Surrozen and Takeda. Bernd Schnabl's institution, UC San Diego, has received research support from Axial Biotherapeutics, BiomX, ChromoLogic, CymaBay Therapeutics, Intercept, NGM Biopharmaceuticals, Prodigy Biotech and Synlogic Operating Company. Bernd Schnabl is founder of Nterica Bio. UC San Diego has filed several patents with Yi Duan, Sonja Lang, and Bernd Schnabl as inventors related to this work. The other authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Intervention and therapeutic strategies for inflammatory digestive diseases anchored in gut microbiota. The essence of microbiological therapy lies in augmenting the abundance of beneficial bacteria while diminishing the presence of pathogenic bacteria in the gut (left panel, existing treatment strategies; right panel, Emerging Strategies and Technologies). ECM, extracellular matrix.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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