SBIR Phase II: Development of a Novel Measurement Technology to Enable Longitudinal Multiomic Investigations of the Gut Microbiome

SBIR 第二阶段：开发新型测量技术以实现肠道微生物组的纵向多组学研究

• 批准号: 2314685
• 负责人: Dylan Nichols
• 金额: $ 97.68万
• 依托单位: BIOMESENSE, INC.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Cooperative Agreement
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-03-15 至 2026-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2314685&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; Development; Novel

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project would be a significant increase the commercial, scientific, and human health potential of the microbiome field by enabling large-scale, dense longitudinal measurement and analysis of microbial RNA. This could enable: (1) a significant reduction in false discoveries caused by a lack of reproducible data; (2) a major cost reduction – ensuring these advancements are accessible to the entire industry; (3) high-frequency sampling, making time-series explorations routine; and (4) the creation of a large-scale database that contains both DNA and RNA data, which could lead to unprecedented discovery and validation of precision medicine biomarkers. Successful completion of this project could have a high likelihood of advancing the health and welfare of the American public, increasing the economic competitiveness of the United States healthcare and life sciences sector, and enhancing partnerships between academia and industry.The proposed project describes the development of an RNA feature to an existing microbiome measurement and analysis platform that consists of an automated sample collection system and an analytics engine for sequence data. Currently, the question of which genes are being expressed by gut microbes (which can be studied using RNA transcripts) is an extraordinarily promising research field for advancing the understanding of host-microbial interactions. This is because bacteria that make up a small amount of the gut microbiome can still influence the community dramatically through their gene expression. This can be overlooked by DNA sequence data, which only measures bacterial abundance. Despite this, RNA remains under-utilized, as RNA quickly degrades outside of the cell, and most laboratories lack the capability to measure RNA at any significant scale reliably. The main activities of this project will be (1) refining a process for RNA capture and storage, (2) integrating these into the automated hardware system, and (3) developing the methods and infrastructure for analysis of the resulting RNA datasets. This project will allow studies of gene expression in the gut microbiome to become commonplace, allowing researchers to discover more powerful clinically relevant biomarkers for precision medicine applications.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该小企业创新研究 (SBIR) 第二阶段项目的更广泛影响将是通过实现微生物 RNA 的大规模、密集纵向测量和分析，显着提高微生物组领域的商业、科学和人类健康潜力： (1) 因缺乏可重复数据而导致的错误发现显着减少；(2) 成本大幅降低——确保整个行业都能获得这些进步；(3) 高频采样，使时间序列探索成为常态；和(4) 创建包含 DNA 和 RNA 数据的大型数据库，这可能会导致精准医学生物标志物的前所未有的发现和验证。该项目的成功完成很可能会促进人类的健康和福祉。美国公众，提高美国医疗保健和生命科学行业的经济竞争力，并加强学术界和工业界之间的合作关系。拟议的项目描述了将 RNA 功能开发到现有微生物组测量和分析平台，该平台包括自动样本收集系统和序列数据分析引擎。目前，肠道微生物表达哪些基因（可以使用 RNA 转录本进行研究）是一个非常有前景的研究领域，有助于增进对宿主与微生物相互作用的理解，这是因为细菌只占肠道微生物的一小部分。肠道微生物组仍然可以通过其基因表达对群落产生巨大影响，而 DNA 序列数据只能测量细菌丰度，因此 RNA 仍然没有得到充分利用，因为 RNA 在细胞外会迅速降解，而且大多数实验室都缺乏这种数据。测量能力该项目的主要活动是 (1) 完善 RNA 捕获和存储的过程，(2) 将这些过程集成到自动化硬件系统中，以及 (3) 开发用于分析 RNA 的方法和基础设施。该项目将使肠道微生物组中的基因表达研究变得普遍，使研究人员能够发现用于精准医学应用的更强大的临床相关生物标志物。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过评估被认为值得支持。使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。