NIH Grants $5.6 Million to Baylor Scientist for Research Into Personalized Bowel Treatments

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded researcher Aaron Wright, Ph.D., at Baylor University’s department of biology, a $5.6 million NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award for his work on microbiome research.

Aaron Wright, Ph.D.

The NIH grants the Director’s Transformative Research Award for ground-breaking research that may involve some risk but may potentially disrupt existing scientific models of thought or forge new research avenues. Wright will partner with Randy Longman, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Jill Roberts Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease and associate professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, and Chun-Jun Guo, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Jill Roberts Center and associate professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, on a project exploring a personalized approach to the microbiome that may yield new treatments for gut disorders.

The microbiome is made up of colonies of bacteria and other microbes living throughout the body, especially in the gastrointestinal tract. Although it generally performs the same function, each person’s microbiome is unique based on factors, such as diet, environment, genetics, medications, birth circumstances and other determinants.

Wright and his colleagues are conducting research to develop a method to measure individual microbiome activity to potentially identify deficits or overactivity that may contribute to digestive disorders, including ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and irritable bowel syndrome. The research team is looking to develop ways to identify specific bacteria that may be used in individualized fecal microbiota transplantations.

“No longer would you be depositing an entire fecal sample but taking a select handful of [bacteria] that you could transplant. That’s again the long-term goal: to treat different intestinal issues through personalized therapeutics,” said Wright in a news release.