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THE MICROBIOME FOUNDATION

Let’s stop making ourselves sick! The Microbiome Foundation – at the forefront of a health revolution

Our goals

Funding research

Funding medical research on the gut microbiota in connection with digestive and metabolic diseases.

Numerous scientists consider the gut microbiota one of the main accelerators of medical research in the 21st century. We are on the cusp of a revolution that will require significant resources to find new treatments. The gut microbiota promises to lead to solutions in various fields of medicine (immunology, oncology, central nervous system, gastroenterology, infectious diseases, etc.).

The gut microbiota promises to lead to solutions in various fields of medicine (immunology, oncology, central nervous system, gastroenterology, infectious diseases, etc.).

The Microbiome Foundation focuses on diseases whose emergence and maintenance are associated with the gut microbiota, supporting fundamental and large-scale clinical research projects in this area.

In practice, this means funding research on:

  • chronic intestinal inflammatory diseases (Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis),
  • functional intestinal disorders,
  • certain types of cancer,
  • autoimmune diseases,
  • neurological and neurodegenerative diseases,
  • allergies,
  • liver diseases,
  • metabolic syndrome,
  • diabetes,
  • obesity,
  • NASH, and others diseases.

The Microbiome Foundation concentrates on funding research with a strong nutritional component.

We believe that food, by altering the composition of the microbiota, can be used as an adjunctive therapy. As such, it has its rightful place in treating disease. We want to encourage a transversal approach to disease that draws on all available resources, including non-pharmacological therapies, to improve the wellbeing and health of all.

Raising public awareness

Raising public awareness about the importance of a healthy diet as a key factor in the formation of the microbiota.

Maintaining our microbiota, in particular through nutrition, helps preserve our “health capital”.
A veritable breeding ground for bacteria, germs, and fungi of all types, the microbiota is at the basis of many metabolic reactions. Our environment can often be harmful to our intestines: poor diet (high in saturated fats, refined sugars, additives, etc.), stress, tobacco, certain medications, etc.

Diet is one of the key factors in the formation of the microbiota. Without watching our diet, how can we expect to have a healthy microbiota, which guarantees sustained health?

Never before has there been such an abundance of food in our societies. Today, obesity is responsible for more deaths around the world than famine.

Previously confined to developed nations, obesity now also impacts many developing countries.

Consuming too much food – in particular processed foods and foods with low nutritional value, high in carbohydrates and low-quality fats – causes not just obesity, but also a host of chronic and non-chronic diseases: cancer, diabetes, NASH (fatty liver disease), metabolic syndrome, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, etc.

We are dealing with a major global crisis: the impact of an unhealthy diet is devastating, in terms of mortality, causing 2.8 million (1) deaths each year, but also in terms of costs, with the financial impact of obesity estimated at 2.8% (1) of global GDP. Beyond that, it is the general well-being of the population that is being undermined.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(1) Source: OMS 2016, CDC, OECD

Our values

Innovation and prevention are at the heart of what the Microbiome Foundation does.
Research on the gut microbiota represents one of the major advances in current medicine and promises to lead to new therapeutic discoveries. As a result, we encourage all initiatives that make it possible to better understand how this ecosystem works and the mechanisms by which the microbiota influences our health.
Our diet doesn’t have be a source of disease. That’s why we work to raise public awareness about the vital importance of diet to our general health and support initiatives to encourage healthier eating. Prevention is a fundamental paradigm shift in the current evolution of medicine. We are fully committed to moving in this direction in order to help each individual understand how to maintain his or her “health capital”. Because preventing is often easier than curing.

Our history

This adventure began with the Fonds CSP (PSC Fund), an endowment fund created in 2011, which has been funding medical research on primary sclerosing cholangitis, a very rare disease of the bile ducts, ever since.
This research is carried out at Saint-Antoine Hospital, a referral centre for biliary diseases, by Professor Chantal Housset, director of the research laboratory “Metabolic and biliary fibro-inflammatory diseases of the liver”, and Professor Olivier Chazouillères, division chief of hepatology.
A line of research emerged from the work we funded: namely, the gut microbiota as a promising avenue for finding a treatment in the area of PSC.
This led to our interest in the microbiota in general, once we recognised the extremely vast potential of its therapeutic application. As a result, we created the Microbiome Foundation to develop this potential while also tackling a major public health challenge – that of the devastating effects of our diet.

Our partners

The Dassault Group is a longstanding founding partner of the Microbiome Foundation, supporting us since the launch of the PSC Fund. It was their strong commitment that allowed us to finance promising research on the link between disruption of the gut microbiota and primary sclerosing cholangitis, paving the way for new avenues of treatment. Also thanks to Dassault’s vital support, the Microbiome Foundation was able to get off the ground and is now evolving to support the scientific revolution represented by the gut microbiota.

The Dassault Group has long been committed to its role as one of the very first French sponsors of scientific research.

The Microbiome Foundation has partnered with IAG Microbiome to promote to the general public the information resulting from the research led by this consortium of Academies of Health throughou the world.

Under the patronage of the IAP (Interacademic Partnership for Health), the National Academy of Medicine France and the Institut de France: Academy of Sciences, the IAG Microbiome programme, “One World, one Health, the microbiome as a biomarker of eco health”, was created thanks to a global initiative of microbiome researchers with the support of the Academies of Health (IAP for Health). This birth was formalized at the 1st World Academic Colloquium in 2017 at the Academy of Medicine.

The objectives of this program are to:

  • standardize practices in the study of microbiome,
  • measure the impact of the microbiome for a more personalized medicine in chronic diseases,
  • measure the effects of food and environmental pollution on dysbiosis (quantitative and qualitative depletion) of the microbiome,
  • find research avenues to curb antibiotic-resistance.

The results will be presented at the 2nd World Academic Colloquium on June 27, 2021.

Thanks to the support of the Roquette Foundation for Health, the Microbiome Foundation is proud to fund innovative research into the role of the gut microbiota in functional digestive disorders and eating disorders associated with obesity and anorexia nervosa. This research will provide a better understanding of how to use nutritional interventions to adjust the microbiota and alleviate these disorders.

Under the aegis of the Fondation de France, the Roquette Foundation supports innovative and educational projects in the areas of diet and nutrition.

Our team

Board of directors

Operational team

Scientific editor

A word from our president

The Microbiome Foundation was born of the desire to support a genuine revolution in health. To achieve this, we need to bring together all our energy, curiosity, empathy, generosity, and conviction.
Supporting the Microbiome Foundation means committing with us to bringing about a new paradigm in health, towards a more personalised and preventative approach. This approach is based on two complementary pillars: first, respecting and maintaining our “health capital” through a healthy and varied diet and, second, developing research on the gut microbiota, for which diet is a key factor.
Today, our western societies are facing a major public health challenge: Obesity and the diseases it causes, linked to junk food, are having devastating consequences in terms of health and costs.
We can no longer ignore the extent to which our diet impacts our health by shaping our microbiota. That’s why the Microbiome Foundation supports research on the gut microbiota to open new avenues for preventing and curing disease while making the fight against “junk food” a priority. We are motivated by a single message: Let’s stop making ourselves sick!
The momentum is there, but the road to raising awareness amongst as wide a public as possible is still long. In the name of the Microbiome Foundation, I would like to thank you sincerely for your support and commitment.
President of the Microbiome Foundation, Alfred Véricel

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