Buzz is growing over the potential of research on the microbiome to yield new therapeutics. Scrip asked pharma, academics and venture capitalists how long it might take to see results, what breakthroughs are needed and which therapeutic areas might benefit first. Vote to tell us what you think.

Emerging Company Profile: Microbiotica, a UK biotech spin-out from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute announced late last year, says it has unique capabilities in culturing and sequencing the human bacterial microbiome that will be of use to develop bacterial mixes for therapeutic use.

The UK Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute’s latest spin-out has received start-up funding to exploit more than six years of gut bacterial genome sequencing in order to develop novel bacteria-based therapies for a range of diseases.

Finding the right microbial balance in the gut may be the way of the future for treatment of conditions like obesity and diabetes. That’s where some notable medical futurists are looking and where some early commercial clinical trials are underway. In addition to all the usual uncertainties about new ideas in therapeutics, this idea has an extra question mark: what will the regulatory model be?