Principal Investigator Eric Alm
Project Website http://imes.mit.edu/microbiome
The Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics (CMIT) is a New England regional center to advance the science of the human microbiome and the treatment of conditions and diseases associated with an altered microbiome. The center will focus on supporting the intersection of research, clinical practice, computational biology, and engineering. Located at MIT, with co-directors from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the center is dedicated to fostering and supporting a research ecosystem involving the participation of hospitals, other universities, and research institutes in the region.
The center envisions a world where conditions with a genesis in the microbiome can be prevented by low-cost dietary changes or engineered dietary supplements, and where rare, acute conditions are readily diagnosed and then treated by standardized therapies.
The center's mission is to develop a deep scientific understanding of the function of the human microbiome and its role in health and disease and to give clinicians the power to assess and manipulate the microbiome to improve health.
The vast majority of technical papers ever published on the human microbiome were written in the last five years; progress and learning in this field are proceeding at a very rapid rate. At the same time, there is widespread agreement that the most important advancements will occur at the unruly intersection of basic research, clinical practice, and engineering, and that breakthroughs will require efforts that focus on enabling and nurturing this intersection.
To spur breakthroughs from discovery science to clinical application, the center has three core functions:
(*) Funding research, by soliciting and funding proposals(*) Accelerating research projects by enabling shared services(*) Attracting talent to the field and broadening its reach by involving the academic community
The center is launching with an initial $25M expendable budget over 5 years, and the first requests for proposal will be released in January 2015. The co-directors welcome additional support and partnership to expand its reach and impact.