For some years now, the subject of transplantation fecal has made a name for itself in the world scientific. Considered a promising treatment by many experts, this technique of transplanting the microbiota from one healthy individual to another, sick, has, for example, proven itself in cases of Covid-19 or as an anti-aging remedy – so far only in mice.
And if, as ScienceAlert reminds usresearch is still in progress as to the virtues of this method, it is already used in the treatment of inflammatory diseases of theintestine. But some scientists see even further.
By developing a system for carrying out “autologous fecal transplants”in other words when “the giver and the receiver are the same person”there would no longer be any need to worry regarding incompatibility issues between two individuals.
But for that, it would be necessary to collect stool samples from a person upstream, that is to say when they are young and in good health, then to store them thanks to a method of cryopreservation in order to be able to use them more. late. This is where the “banks of caca» enters the game.
A promising future
“Conceptually, the idea of stool banking for an autologous fecal transplant is similar to that of parents banking umbilical cord blood of their baby for possible future usecomments Yang-Yu Liu, a biologist at Harvard University. However, the potential of the stool bank is greater: we expect the chances of using stool samples in the future to be much higher than for cord blood.”
These types of banks already exist. The first one, OpenBiomeopened its doors in 2012 in Somerville, in the Massachusetts, reports ScienceAlert. Since then, these laboratories have flourished all over the globe, even if their primary purpose is not to allow people to store their own stool.
“Instead of starting from scratch, existing high-level stool banks might be repurposed for microbiome rejuvenation with autologous fecal transplantation”suggests Yang-Yu Liu in a study published June 30, 2022 in the journal Trends in Molecular Medicine.
For Scott. T. Weiss, co-author of the study, these self-transplants might even be used one day “to treat autoimmune diseases like asthma, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, obesity, and even heart disease and aging.”