OpenBiome is a nonprofit health research organization based in

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

accelerating research on the

human microbiome The human microbiome is the aggregate of all microbiota that reside on or within human tissues and biofluids along with the corresponding List of human anatomical features, anatomical sites in which they reside, including the human gastrointes ...

. They partner with leading researchers, clinicians and innovators to advance and ensure access to novel and affordable microbiome therapeutics.

History

OpenBiome distributes material to

hospital A hospital is a healthcare institution providing patient treatment with specialized Medical Science, health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically ...

s and clinics to support the treatment of ''

C. difficile ''Clostridioides difficile'' ( syn. ''Clostridium difficile'') is a bacterium known for causing serious diarrheal infections, and may also cause colon cancer. It is known also as ''C. difficile'', or ''C. diff'' (), and is a Gram-positive spec ...

'', the most common pathogen causing

hospital-acquired infection A hospital-acquired infection, also known as a nosocomial infection (from the Greek , meaning "hospital"), is an infection that is acquired in a hospital or other health care, healthcare facility. To emphasize both hospital and nonhospital sett ...

in the U.S. OpenBiome provides frozen preparations of screened and filtered human stool for use in fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) therapies. In collaboration with their manufacturing partners at the University of Minnesota, OpenBiome provides clinicians with two different liquid formulations of fecal microbiota: MTP101-LR, to treat recurrent ''C. difficile'' infection unresponsive to standard therapies, and MTP101-LF, a high-dose formulation intended to treat severe-fulminant ''C. difficile''. As of February 2024, OpenBiome had provided over 70,000 treatments to all 50 states. OpenBiome was founded in 2012 by Mark Smith, a microbiology student at MIT, and James Burgess, an MBA student at the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (branded as MIT Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree progra ...

. It is the first public stool bank, and was founded to facilitate use of FMT. The logistical burdens associated with screening and processing fecal material have made it difficult for clinicians to offer FMT to patients with recurrent ''C. difficile'' infections.

References

External links

Official Website
{{Microbiota Feces Organizations established in 2012 Health charities in the United States Charities based in Massachusetts Medical and health organizations based in Massachusetts 2012 establishments in Massachusetts