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MICROBIAL ENGINEERING

An oral bacterial cocktail for kidney protection

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 4, pages 847–848 (2020)Cite this article

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The oral delivery of a microencapsulated bacterial cocktail into animal models of kidney disease promotes the degradation of nitrogenous waste in the gut, thereby supporting renal function.

The gut microbiome, which is integral to human health1, influences the production and consumption of small molecules that affect human physiology. Recent attempts to leverage the gut microbiome therapeutically include engineered probiotics for phenylketonuria2, hyperammonemia3 and cancer immunotherapy4. Although the kidney is the primary processor of nitrogenous waste in the body, the waste can also be processed in the gut by resident bacteria5. However, whether these properties of gut-resident bacteria could be harnessed for therapeutic intervention in the context of the inadequate excretion of nitrogenous waste, as occurring in chronic kidney disease, is unclear6. Writing in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Xian-Zheng Zhang and colleagues now show, in murine models of acute kidney injury and chronic kidney failure and in porcine models of kidney failure, that encapsulated bacteria delivered orally can degrade accumulated nitrogenous waste7.

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Fig. 1: Genetic metabolic coordination versus spatial metabolic coordination.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pathology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    John Jarman & Dylan Dodd

  2. Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Dylan Dodd

Authors
  1. John Jarman
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  2. Dylan Dodd
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Correspondence to Dylan Dodd.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Jarman, J., Dodd, D. An oral bacterial cocktail for kidney protection. Nat Biomed Eng 4, 847–848 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-020-00610-y

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