In a new study, Maier et al. reveal that non-antibiotic drugs intended to target human cells have off-target effects on the growth of human gut bacteria at clinically relevant concentrations. These results emphasize the need for a new field of metagenomic toxicology aimed at a more comprehensive understanding of the toxicity of compounds for humans and their associated microbial communities.
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Acknowledgements
P.J.T. is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator and a Nadia’s Gift Foundation Innovator supported by the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation (DRR-42-16), the NIH (R01HL122593) and the Searle Scholars Program (SSP-2016-1352). P.S. is supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research fellowship.
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P.J.T. is on the scientific advisory board for Kaleido, Seres Therapeutics and WholeBiome. P.S. declares no competing interests.
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Spanogiannopoulos, P., Turnbaugh, P.J. Broad collateral damage of drugs against the gut microbiome. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 15, 457–458 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41575-018-0028-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41575-018-0028-3
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