“Korea is fully capable of developing new microbiome drugs"

Eung-Bin Kim, Professor of Systems Biology at Yonsei University

“Success and failure in the development of medicines depend on identifying the keystone species in the human gut microbiome“

“Need to focus on developing treatments rather than simple Intestinal Microbiota to win in the global competition"

Eung-Bin Kim, Professor of Systems Biology at Yonsei University

“The development of metagenomics technology that extracts DNA directly from samples without culturing in 1998 enabled the field of human microbiome research to make a giant leap forward.

 

The success and failure of innovative new microbiome-based therapeutics depend on identifying, standardizing, and materializing the keystone species in the human gut microbiome.“ The development direction for new, innovative next-generation human microbiome-based therapeutics sought by Professor Eung-Bin Kim, Department of Systems Biology at Yonsei University, is focused on the understanding of the material cycle in the ecological structure.

 

More than 10,000 microorganisms inhabit our body (mouth, gut, nose, genital, skin, etc) along with 37 trillion bacteria.

 

Regarding this, Professor Kim said, “What’s important is not the microorganisms themselves but the microbial genes and proteins.

 

For example, microorganisms that digest fat are always present in a healthy intestine.

 

However, the task is not always performed by the same microorganism.

 

Just like how players replace each other’s role in sports games.” Among Professor Kim’s microbial studies, one that caught the reporter’s attention was his identification of the existence of probiotics in jeotgal (Korean traditional pickled fish made with croaker or hairtail, etc).

 

In the early stages of the salt-aging period, jeotgal contains a lot of bacteria, but 99% of the bacteria are killed after 2 years of aging.

 

In the end, only 2 or 3 types of basophilic lactic acid bacteria such as Tetragenococcus remain.

 

The study received much interest from the academia and media.

 

Professor Kim, who is considered an authority in microbiology, has his eyes on the potential held by Akkermansia muciniphila and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii in gut microbiota that is considered next-generation probiotic candidates.” Kim said, “The key to probiotics is in the time of residence in the intestine, and ‘Akkermansia’ and ‘Faecalibacterium’ were found to have a long survival time in the intestinal mucosal barrier.

 

Also, the fact that these species were successfully cultured with domestic technology is also rated highly.

 

We are looking forward to the development of innovative new drugs based on these species, which are the keystone species in the human gut microbiome.” On how to confidently compete against strong R&D players in developing new and innovative microbiome-based therapeutics in the global market, Kim said that the focus should be on treating various disease groups rather than simply developing and releasing intestinal microbiota products.

 

In particular, open collaboration between the industry-academica-research and policy and systemic support should also be promptly prepared.

 

Meanwhile, Professor Kim had served as the Dean of Admissions, and Dean of the College of Systems Biotechnology at Yonsei University, and authored ‘Alcohol, Disease, War: A History of Microorganisms', 'The Whole World is Full of Microorganisms', 'Biotechnology gives wings to Life Sciences’ and 'I Live with Microorganisms'.