Our Platform
Seres’ pioneering science, paired with powerful drug development and manufacturing capabilities, underpins its unique therapeutics platform.
Transforming rigorous scientific insights into a potentially groundbreaking new class of medicines
A robust body of research, which includes work by Seres and our collaborators, has revealed the integral role the gut microbiome plays in overall human health. Increasingly the gut microbiome is understood as a pillar of essential functions such as metabolism, immune and inflammatory responses, and protection against potential invaders. Bacteria, a major component of the gut microbiome, can affect these various functions by producing metabolites which interact with other microbes and the host. Scientific understanding of the role of the microbiome and microbe-associated metabolites has advanced tremendously and is allowing development of therapeutics that may treat a variety of serious diseases.
Over the past decade, Seres has pioneered the translation of microbiome insights into an entirely new class of potential new medicines. Our microbiome therapeutics are consortia of bacteria in oral capsules that are designed to have specific functional pharmacological properties to modify the gut microbiome that are being investigated to see if they are able to treat and prevent disease.
Studies show that microbiome therapeutics can drive pharmacological effects across multiple pathways simultaneously.
Our approach:
Delivering a multifunctional
consortium of bacteria
The gastrointestinal (GI) microbiome consists of diverse bacteria which contribute to our metabolism and our immune function and have impacts throughout the body—protecting against numerous diseases, including serious infections, chronic inflammatory diseases like ulcerative colitis, and cancer.
A properly functioning GI microbiome has the following properties:
Disruption of the following microbiome-modulated functions can lead to and aggravate infectious diseases:
At Seres, we identify consortia of bacteria that are designed to modulate the functional properties of the microbiome. These bacteria have the potential to treat infectious disease via multiple effects including, for example, by changing the set of metabolites found in the gut to inhibit pathogen growth.
Loss of the following microbiome functions can lead to and aggravate inflammatory diseases:
At Seres, we identify consortia of bacteria that modulate functions of the microbiome. These bacteria produce changes leading to improved gut lining integrity, reduced gut inflammation, and reduced local immune activation.
Disruption of the following microbiome-modulated functions can drive cancer progression or reduce a person’s response to cancer immunotherapy.
At the heart of our approach are multifunctional consortia of bacteria that are designed to functionally interact with host cells and tissues to treat disease.
We use data from clinical studies to discover the microbes and microbe-associated metabolites that functionally interact with human cells and tissues to see if they can be targeted to treat diseases, such as ulcerative colitis and C. difficile infection, or to improve the response to disease treatments, such as cancer immunotherapy. We then utilize advanced computational tools and proprietary functional assays to design consortia of commensal bacteria that modulate these targets and act on multiple microbial and host functions.
Our focus on function reflects a key discovery from recent large-scale analyses of the gut microbiome: though microbiome composition can vary widely between healthy individuals, the functional outputs of a healthy microbiome are universal. In other words, good health and resistance to disease depend on the functions provided by the community of microbes, rather than on the presence or absence of any specific bacterial species.
Seres is harnessing defined consortia, or collections, of bacteria to modulate microbiome function. Instead of targeting just one disease pathway, bacterial consortia are multifunctional. This means they might have multiple pharmacological effects and modulate numerous functional pathways within the body to achieve therapeutic impact.
Our strategy:
The Microbiome
Therapeutics Engine
Seres has built an unprecedented Microbiome Therapeutics Engine to design, test, and manufacture multifunctional bacterial consortia.
Microbiome therapeutics engine
1. Microbiome biomarker discovery
As we begin development of a new therapeutic for a disease of interest, we gather insights from existing clinical studies and microbiome datasets. These datasets come from human subjects for the relevant patient population, a critical first step that is known as reverse translation. Starting with patient data allows us to identify and target drug development efforts on modulating microbiome functions that are clinically relevant to the disease. We deploy our proprietary, customized analytical tools to interrogate tissue samples, genomic and metabolomic data (revealing important bacterial functions and species), and findings from our own and others’ human studies to discern which microbes and microbiome functions are altered in disease or predict a poor clinical outcome. These microbiome biomarkers define disease-relevant functional pathways that become our drug targets.
2. Consortia design
Next, we design leads for development: unique consortia of bacteria that can modulate the target microbiome functions defined by the biomarkers. We draw upon our extensive proprietary strain library of commensal (resident) human gut bacteria. Bacterial strains are selected for consortia based on an expansive repository of genomic and functional screening information, with each strain addressing multiple target functions. We iteratively evaluate candidate consortia in computational models for specific functional characteristics, including interactions with human cells and tissues, other species in the gut microbiome, and impacts on specific disease-relevant functional pathways.
3. Pharmacological validation
Once we have assembled consortia with the desired functional effects, we test their pharmacological properties in the laboratory using in vitro assays and disease-relevant animal models. For disease states and functions that are challenging to study, we have developed proprietary human tissue cell assays, including organoids, to replicate key aspects of the disease and test the effects of individual bacterial strains and therapeutic consortia. We use insights from these experiments to iteratively refine and finalize the bacteria comprising therapeutic consortia to define the drug candidate.
4. Advanced manufacturing and oral formulation
Finally, we manufacture the bacterial consortia for evaluation in human clinical studies. Our in-house manufacturing organization integrates process development, current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP), Quality Control and Quality Assurance. These capabilities allow us to deliver effective, high-quality and consistent live microbiome therapeutics formulated for oral delivery.
5. Quality control and product safety
Our therapeutic candidates are comprised of highly purified consortia of targeted human commensal bacteria, which are manufactured under current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) conditions and quality controlled using stringent standards to ensure product quality and consistency. In addition to conducting rigorous strain library and donor screening, Seres utilizes unique manufacturing processes that have been demonstrated to inactivate numerous potential pathogens. Seres believes that donor and product screening are necessary but insufficient to minimize infection risk for donor-derived microbiome and FMT products. Seres takes additional steps to inactivate potential pathogens, which represents critical intervention to increase quality assurance and to help minimize the risk to patients.
