We are a reflection of our gut microbes

Written by Dr Chong Chun Wie, School of Pharmacy

There is an increasing appreciation that the composition and stability of gut microbes are pivotal to our health. My research focuses on understanding how difference ethnicity, gender, diet, and lifestyle influence the gut microbial community and how these differences impact health and diseases. Most of the existing research in the microbiome is restricted to Europe, the USA, and China.

There remains a knowledge gap in the understanding of the gut microbiome for the populations in South East Asia. I hope my research will shed some light on how the region/population-specific gut microbial composition influences the disease's development. Besides, a better understanding of the gut bacterial distribution across different populations might further improve the accuracy of disease diagnosis and facilitate the development of a personalised intervention.

Multiomics platforms and advanced multivariate statistical analyses are applied to disentangle the complex relationship between the gut microbiome, physiology, and metabolism in the development of diseases. I am currently involved in several gut microbiome studies, i.e., the study of how probiotics improve short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) production in the gut and its beneficial effect on Parkinson's Disease, assessment of SCFAs supplementation and its impact on overall gut microbial composition and Diabetes Mellitus. I received a research fund from the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia to assess the link between salivary amylase, gut microbes, and gut inflammation.

My study of the gut microbiome will be a long-term commitment and interest to the clinical practitioners, dieticians/nutritionists, and healthcare and pharmaceutical companies around the area of probiotics, diagnostics, and wellness. One of our projects has attracted sponsorship from the Asian Microbiome Library (AMILI).

The Monash South East Asia Community Observatory (SEACO) and Genomics Facility have immensely supported my research. Meanwhile, the opportunity to connect with like-minded researchers from Monash University Australia has greatly expanded my view towards my research areas.

For further reading, please refer to my published work on various aspects of the microbiome:
1. Preterm vs term
2. Diet (coffee consumption)
3. Parkinson
4. Probiotics
5. Stress
6. Ethnicity