Dr. Deanna Gibson kept encountering the same stubborn problem inside her gut-health lab at UBC Okanagan. She couldn’t figure out why probiotic bacteria didn’t have a clinical effect in people with conditions like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
A professor in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, Dr. Gibson studies the relationship between the gut microbiome, inflammation and health. “I truly believe in the power of beneficial microbes,” she says. “But why weren’t they working? That was the problem I wanted to solve.”
The probiotics industry is worth billions, but Dr. Gibson’s Centre for Microbiome and Inflammation Research kept identifying gaps between expectations and results. It took nearly a decade for her to find answers, and to turn her ideas into Melius MicroBiomics, a Kelowna biotech company approaching its first human clinical trial.
Read the full story here: UBC News