Description
The lung microbiome is an area of recently emerged and growing research interest. This has stemmed in part from significant advances in molecular tools to identify microbiota, such as next-generation sequencing and microarray platforms, which have facilitated new insights on the role of microbiota in organ systems outside of the lung. Thus, overarching goals of lung microbiome research include improving knowledge about microbial populations associated with the respiratory tract and lungs, their role in lung health or disease, and ultimately developing improved approaches for diagnosing and treating chronic respiratory diseases in which the microbiome has a role. However, many challenges currently exist, including clinical, technical and analytical considerations in performing such research. Strategies that help to successfully address these challenges would enable optimal realization of the above goals.
Workshop Description
The Division of Lung Diseases (DLD) of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) convened a workshop on December 15-16, 2011 to identify important knowledge gaps and key areas for further development to advance lung microbiome research. The workshop sought to obtain information from and facilitate discussions among investigators from diverse but relevant research expertise. Participants included clinical investigators of asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis, and HIV, as well as basic scientists in microbiology, genomics, statistics and computational biology. Investigators involved in the ongoing NHLBI-funded Lung HIV Microbiome Project (LHMP) also contributed perspectives.
The workshop was organized into several sessions with presentations including the following areas: 1) review of current knowledge of the lung microbiome in asthma, COPD, and cystic fibrosis, 2) studies of healthy and HIV-infected individuals performed in the LHMP, 3) review of gut microbiome studies in areas such as pathogen colonization resistance and mining for immunomodulatory species, and 4) example metabolomic applications studying the gut microbiome-cardiovascular axis. In addition, open panel discussions were conducted to discuss unique lung sampling issues as well as technical and computational challenges for the field. By the conclusion of the workshop, multiple areas of need were identified and discussed. Important considerations and recommendations were compiled and are presented in this summary.