EP 138: Personalised medicine using microbiome models with Dr. Almut Heinken
June 6, 2024
In this episode, we welcome Dr. Almut Heinken, Junior Professor at the INSERM Institute of Nutrition, Genetics, Environment, and Risk Exposure at Université de Lorraine. Her work focuses on multiscale metabolic modelling of host-microbiome interactions and their role in human health. She has contributed to the development of genome-scale reconstructions of human microbes, known as the AGORA resource. Almut has also developed tools to build personalised microbiome models and applied these models to inflammatory bowel disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and colorectal cancer. She is currently working on modelling the interactions between diet, the microbiome, and the epigenome. Tune in to this exciting discussion!
0:00 Introduction
1:45 Almut’s research experience, including two recent publications on genome-scale metabolic reconstruction human microorganisms
- Genome-scale metabolic reconstruction of 7,302 human microorganisms for personalized medicine
- APOLLO: A genome-scale metabolic reconstruction resource of 247,092 diverse human microbes spanning multiple continents, age groups, and body sites
8:00 Implications for personalised medicine and drug discovery using microorganisms in colorectal cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, and more
14:30 Using metabolite and microbiome models to predict the effectiveness of medications
18:00 Differences in microbial communities between various ethnicities, nationalities, and races
24:00 Understanding microbiome community models with the goal of informing drug discovery
26:30 The interplay between diet, the microbiome, and nervous system
28:00 How to use predictive models to understand the diet-microbiome relationship
36:00 Upcoming projects studying the gut microbiome and epigenetics
38:30 Comparing a vaginal birth to a caesarean section on the child’s microbial immunity
40:00 Explaining the cause of heterogeneous differences in monogenic diseases
45:00 Closing remarks
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