The microbiome holds great promise for novel drug development against chronic conditions, but the demonstrated efficacy of interventions hides a lack of mechanistic understanding about the microbes and molecular pathways involved.

• Current Microbiome strategies show efficacy but lack mechanistic understanding.

• Rodent or other mammalian models for animal testing for chronic effects of a large number of microbial candidates is time-consuming and expensive.

C. elegans-bacteria interactions make it a powerful model for dissecting the effects of single bacterial strains isolated from the human microbiome. By manipulating the bacterial lawn on which our worms are cultured, our automated Healthspan assays can test for acute and chronic effects of specific bacterial strains, extracts or conditioned media on development, mobility and ageing. We can also test compounds that change how bacteria influence animal health.

• C. elegans have shown to be relevant to mammal/human cellular pathways and are amenable to genetic modification.

• C. elegans have a fast experimental turnaround with a 3 day lifecycle, a 2-3 weeks lifespan and a large number of progeny.
• It has been shown that genetic or pharmaceutical manipulation of the bacteria that are used to culture C. elegans can slow ageing.
  
• We use C. elegans to detect acute and chronic effects on mobility, longevity, fertility much faster and cheaper than you can with mouse models.

We provide the following benefits:

• Cost and time-efficient assays for predictivity data prior to rodent models.

• Rich, sensitive data set that goes far beyond traditional manual lifespan assays.

• Standardised, population-scale acute and chronic testing for mutation and compound effects on both ageing and fitness.

• Team of multidisciplinary experts to advise you on study design and data.