What’s in store for biotech in 2023?

Perhaps 2022 will best be remembered in the life science industry for the return of many of the face-to-face events that fell by the wayside during the COVID-19 pandemic.

January 11, 2023 | By Jim Cornall – Labiotech.eu

Microbiome

Ross Youngs, CEO and co-founder of Biosortia Microbiomics, a company dedicated to microbiome mining for pharmaceutical discovery, gave us three potential trends in the microbiome field in 2023. The first is popularity in understanding the gut and the gut microbiome.

“There are numerous links between a long-term healthy gut microbiome and inflammation. Reduced inflammation could help stave off chronic diseases or their onset, like rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, eczema, asthma, IBD, IBS, cardiovascular disease, and other diseases. Reducing inflammation starts with a healthy and stable gut microbiome,” Youngs said.

“One study I’d like to highlight, from the National Library of Medicine, dives into the role of gut microbiota in intestinal inflammation with respect to diet and extrinsic stressors. The study shares insights into how intentional inflammation and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are associated with dysbiosis of the gut microbiota and the relationship between the two. Researchers found that there are many factors that can impact or alter the gut microbiota from environmental stressors, antibiotics, sleep, physical activity, and physiological stress. Meaning an unhealthy gut is directly linked to inflammation throughout the body.”

Youngs pointed to another study from the National Library of Medicine on gut microbiota, how it houses bacteria and how the presence of these bacteria is related to inflammatory molecules. He said researchers found that as the gut influences the overall health of the hose – certain bacteria found in the gut can cause inflammation that shows itself through conditions such as obesity, atherosclerosis, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and IBD.

The second trend is industries investing in zero-waste packaging.

“Towards the end of 2022 we’re seeing large scale retailers like Patagonia looking to cover ground towards a more sustainable future. But have there been significant ways in how the eCommerce business handles packaging? Zero waste is a concept that needs to be simply articulated – and likely will go sideways without careful consideration and oversight by a completely independent non-profit. Improvements, such as the potential EU law restricting “open space” in a package to a maximum of 20%, explicitly address boxing size for the container and will save resources through efficiency but is by no means zero waste.”

Youngs said combining shipments to an address, box-sizing, material appropriateness, material reduction, recyclability, reusability, and repurposing are some of the possibilities.

“Management and strategy to help understand cost reduction is the best. The opportunity is with traditional industrial engineering at its best. Indeed, handling systems and labor reduction has taken hold in the industry; now it is time to find the dollars in packaging and shipping.”

The third trend in 2023, according to Youngs, is the age of microbiome metabolomics.

“Microbiome mining will continue to become more well known in 2023 and beyond as scientists and researchers are now able to harvest and study microbiome molecules at an industrial scale for the first time. I can foresee a breakthrough when it comes to funding around obtaining microbes because the quality and scale needed to study their chemistry will change the limited ways scientists are able to study small molecules.”

“Today’s best-in-class technologies allow finding and testing an unknown small molecule from an unculturable microbe which is equivalent to finding a quarter in a basketball court. Tomorrow’s technology could find that quarter in the state of Rhode Island representing nearly one million times current capabilities, putting the microbiome in the quantity and quality to investigate.”