New funding targets C. difficile

New funding targets C. difficile

Researcher Elaine Petrof鈥檚 synthetic stool treatment garners major U.S. funding

By Anne Craig

January 18, 2016

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Queen鈥檚 researcher Elaine Petrof has been awarded major funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The up to $1.2 million will enable a multi-institutional team to further develop Repoopulate, a synthetically derived alternative to fecal transplants, used to treat recurrent C. difficile infection.

Early trials of the defined microbe cocktail with a small number of patients at Kingston General Hospital (KGH) have shown it to be highly effective in curing the hard-to-treat, often fatal, disease.

鈥淲e鈥檒l be optimizing the formulation to test it in an early stage clinical trial,鈥 says Dr. Petrof, (School of Medicine), a clinician-researcher at the Kingston General Hospital Research Institute (KGHRI). Dr. Petrof鈥檚 hospital work is being conducted through the Gastrointestinal Diseases Research Unit at Queen鈥檚 University.

Dr. Petrof is working with colleagues at the University of Guelph and Western University on the synthetic stool product.

鈥淭his funding is a tremendous boost for a very promising and innovative discovery,鈥 says Roger Deeley, Vice-Dean Research, Faculty of Health Sciences and KGHRI president. 鈥淚t will ensure that Dr. Petrof and her team continue to advance their efforts to address a common, widespread and serious health threat. It is wonderful to see work being done in this exciting new research frontier being recognized in this way.鈥 

While there are numerous C. difficile therapies being developed based on human stool samples, Dr. Petrof鈥檚 group is the first to produce a synthetic form of the beneficial microbes, using cultures processed in a 鈥渞obotic gut鈥 bioreactor developed at the University of Guelph. 鈥淲e鈥檙e different from stool transplants because we know exactly what鈥檚 in our mixture,鈥 she says. 鈥淭his means a safer, more reproducible product.鈥

The group鈥檚 goal is to develop a more effective fecal transplant treatment for recurrent C. difficile.

鈥淚f this works, we鈥檝e been approached to expand it to other diseases,鈥 Dr. Petrof says. 鈥淓merging research is showing potential for the use of fecal transplants to treat conditions such as ulcerative colitis and obesity.鈥