This congress will bring together key opinion leaders and will focus on laying out the technical challenges and strategic opportunities for basic science, venture capitalists, biotech and pharma to lift the field to the next level. The event will include a face-to-face roundtable discussion moderated by Susan Jones, Senior Editor at Nature Biotechnology and Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenburg, Consultant for Global Engage.

The State of the Field
Great expectations have been raised over the last two decades by advances made in unlocking the mysteries of the microbiome and by first inroads taken into harnessing the resulting scientific insights for wellness and therapeutic purposes.

The sobering reality however is that with the exception of fecal microbiota transplantation for the treatment of Clostridium difficile infection and of a handful of scientifically backed probiotics, the development of microbiome based therapeutics and wellness products – whether targeting the microbiome or using it as a source of therapeutic and prophylactic compounds – has been slow in the making because of our limited understanding of the complex biology underlying the microbiome’s function and physiology.

Hope for the Future
Despite this knowledge gap, researchers, investors and companies are increasingly coming together to devise new and creative ways in which to address the challenge.

Against this backdrop of innovation in the microbiome space, and building on its far-reaching network of key opinion leaders and its experience providing a forum for collaboration in the field, Global Engage is now poised to convene top players from academia and pharma, technology providers and the investment community to discuss and define the future of microbiome research and its potential commercialisation over the next two to four years.

For more information visit www.global-engage.com/event/microbiome-futures.