The human microbiome is a vast and diverse ecosystem of trillions of microorganisms that reside across various body sites, including the gut, skin, respiratory tract, and urogenital system. These microbes play an essential role in regulating the immune system, protecting against pathogens, and maintaining overall health.
When the balance of these microbial communities is disrupted—a phenomenon known as dysbiosis—it can lead to a cascade of health issues. Dysbiosis has been implicated in autoimmune conditions, chronic inflammation, metabolic disorders, and even mental health-related challenges, underscoring its far-reaching effects beyond any single organ system.
Challenges with Linking the Microbiome to Disease
The relationship between the microbiome and disease is inherently challenging to study due to the lack of a clear, universal definition of a “healthy” microbiome. This complexity arises from the fact that microbiome composition significantly varies between individuals due to several factors such as genetics, diet, environment, and lifestyle. The interactions between the gut microbiome and the immune system is incredibly complex, requiring a multidisciplinary omics approach. Although many studies have indicated that there is a correlation between the microbiome and disease, establishing a causal link, requires extensive controlled experiments and more reliable biomarkers. This complexity is not limited to the gut alone but extends to other microbiome niches. For example, disruptions in the skin microbiome have been linked to conditions such as atopic dermatitis and psoriasis, while imbalances in the respiratory microbiome may contribute to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. Similarly, alterations in the urogenital microbiome are associated with conditions like bacterial vaginosis and urinary tract infections.
Additional challenges include ethical and safety concerns such as faecal microbiota transplants, limitations in preclinical translational models, and lack of standardisation in sample collections and analysis. These challenges highlight the urgent need for reliable and actionable biomarkers to decode the microbiome’s role in health and disease.
Antibody Biomarkers: Enabling a Precision Medicine Approach
Emerging evidence suggests dysbiosis might be a key driver in the development and progression of immune-related diseases.8 Central to this evolving perspective, is the need for reliable and disease-specific biomarkers. Antibodies, particularly Immunoglobulin A (IgA), play a crucial role in providing protection against bacterial and fungal infection at barrier surfaces including skin, airways, mucosa and gut. IgA helps maintaining the barrier integrity by trapping pathogens or toxins and supporting the homeostasis with commensal microbiota, balancing defence and tolerance. The role of antibodies is more evident in dysbiosis-driven inflammation and autoimmune diseases where autoantibodies mistakenly target the body’s own tissues.
A precision medicine approach helps address the inherently vast heterogeneity seen in microbiome composition between individuals. Antibodies serve as reliable and actionable biomarkers that can be applied across different microbiome niches. For example, profiling IgA antibodies in the respiratory microbiome provides insights into immune dysregulation in asthma, while studying autoantibodies linked to the urogenital microbiome may help in diagnosing conditions like endometriosis.
Profiling antibodies against the microbiome delivers critical insights into understanding the interplay between the microbiome and the immune system, disease pathology, and providing safer and more efficacious safer treatment plans. Serum antibody titres are an excellent proxy of the acquired immune competence. Hence, offering improved insights in comparison to metagenomics approaches, which are influenced by the current status quo.
Translating Complexity into Actionable Insights
In studies evaluating antibodies against microbes and autoantibodies to human antigens, Oncimmune’s high-throughput, multiplex autoantibody discovery platform, ImmunoINSIGHTS™ identified novel biomarkers linked to Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Additionally, autoantibodies have proven to be predictive markers for systemic inflammatory response syndrome and sepsis in patients undergoing elective surgeries.
Antibody profiling extends its utility beyond the gut, offering valuable insights into other microbiome niches. For example, studies have explored the potential of antibodies associated with the skin microbiome as indicators for chronic conditions such as atopic dermatitis. Similarly, investigations into the respiratory and urogenital microbiomes are uncovering distinct autoantibody patterns that could play a critical role in diagnosing and managing immune-mediated diseases.
The microbiome’s influence on disease and treatment outcomes is an exciting frontier in healthcare, and antibody biomarkers are essential in translating this complexity into actionable insights. As our understanding of these interactions grows, Oncimmune remains at the forefront, leveraging advanced platforms like their own ImmunoINSIGHTS™ microbiome antigen panel to identify novel biomarkers that enable precision medicine.
Interested in exploring how antibody biomarkers can inform your approach to disease pathology and treatment decision-making? Reach out to us to discuss further at immunoinsights@oncimmune.com.
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1 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4566439/
2 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11450
3 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23384445/
4 https://gut.bmj.com/content/73/11/1893
5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40588-023-00213-6
6 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24679531/
7 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27966551/
8 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772431X22000375
9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41385-019-0192-y.pdf
10 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27311879/
11 https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/5/pgae166/7667795
12 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/exd.14940