Gut Microbiota Modulation in IBD: From the Old Paradigm to Revolutionary Tools

Abstract

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) are chronic inflammatory disorders primarily comprising two main conditions: ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. The gut microbiota's role in driving inflammation in IBD has garnered significant attention, yet the precise mechanisms through which the microbiota influences IBD pathogenesis remain largely unclear. Given the limited therapeutic options for IBD, alternative microbiota-targeted therapies-including prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics, and symbiotics-have been proposed. While these approaches have shown promising results, microbiota modulation is still mainly considered an adjunct therapy to conventional treatments, with a demonstrated impact on patients' quality of life. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), already approved for treating Clostridioides difficile infection, represents the first in a series of innovative microbiota-based therapies under investigation. Microbial biotherapeutics are emerging as personalized and cutting-edge tools for IBD management, encompassing next-generation probiotics, bacterial consortia, bacteriophages, engineered probiotics, direct metabolic pathway modulation, and nanotherapeutics. This review explores microbial modulation as a therapeutic strategy for IBDs, highlighting current approaches and examining promising tools under development to better understand their potential clinical applications in managing intestinal inflammatory disorders.

Keywords: dysbiosis; fecal microbiota transplantation; gut microbiota; inflammatory bowel disease; microbial biotherapeutics; microbiota modulation; probiotics.

Figure 1

Microbial biotherapeutics as new therapeutic tools in gut microbiota modulation. The effectiveness of most new microbiota modulation therapies has been demonstrated in preclinical models and the early stages of disease in human models. Fecal microbiota transplantation has also shown effectiveness in human models, both in the early and advanced stages of disease.