Overview
Project Description
Probiotics are introduced to the body on a daily basis, often without us realizing. Probiotics as such are much more available and taking them do not have the same ramifications and side effects as taking a “hard drug” such as a statin.
Especially the way we designed it.
CoBiota is a probiotic that lowers cholesterol by converting cholesterol to coprostanol in the gut. While gut sterol absorption is usually indiscriminate, coprostanol is unique in that it does not follow this convention, and is not absorbed.⁵
Effectively, any converted cholesterol gets excreted out of the body.
To accomplish this, we have integrated a 3-part metabolic pathway into our bacterial chassis that will express enzymes that together perform the conversion.
Conventional probiotics attempt to colonize the gut, boasting high CFU counts in an attempt to allow them to make a consistent change to any individual’s microbiome.⁶
However, just like a fingerprint, each individual’s microbiome is different, and whether a probiotic successfully colonizes is completely dependent on the microbiome composition.⁷ With microbiomes changing constantly, this goal proves even harder to satisfy.
With this in mind, there is no way of knowing with certainty whether a conventional probiotic would have a significant effect on an individual, if any at all.
With the power of genetic engineering, we are able to create a probiotic that doesn’t rely on having to colonize the gut to be effective. This is because our goal is not to interact with the gut itself but rather with the components within (i.e., bile, excess cholesterol, etc.) We house the enzymatic pathway to convert cholesterol to coprostanol inside a chassis that ensures ideal conditions for activity.
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