The role of the human gut virome in inflammatory bowel disease and fecal transplant patients using viral metagenomics.

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic relapsing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that mostly affect young adults, leading to a decreased quality of life. Currently there is no cure, and only supportive treatments are available for these patients. However, accumulating data shows that microbiota plays a pivotal role in the onset and perpetuation of inflammatory bowel diseases.

This PhD project aims to further optimize a protocol to study the human gut virome in a quantitative manner, in order to: compare the gut virome of UC patients and healthy controls; study the role of the human gut virome dynamics in the relapse of UC patients after medicinal treatment; study the gut virome dynamics in UC patients receiving fecal microbiota transplant and search and characterize unknown viruses infecting the human gut.

The development of a method for the investigation of the gut virome in a quantitative way will be a great step forward in diagnostics. Also, a better understanding of the human gut virome and its interplay in UC may results in an early diagnostic assay to detect disease prior to the onset of severe symptoms allowing for an early treatment. Similarly, the identification of viral biomarkers predictive for the outcome of different treatments could help to make a more rational patient-specific decision for the preferred treatment.