The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed precisely measured human fecal material to foster a new era in gut microbiome research.
According to the American Gastroenterological Association’s Center for Gut Microbiome Research & Education, this critical resource will help advance the utility and reproducibility of microbiome-based diagnostics — “which still remain relatively meaningless clinically, although patients continue to buy direct-to-consumer tests, and a standard reference material will mean there’s a better way to ensure quality control and accuracy.”
Though not a therapeutic, Human Fecal Material RM is expected to speed up gastrointestinal (GI) therapeutics since many microbiome-based drugs are inspired by fecal transplants with human stool as the developmental starting point. A standardized reference material will be an important resource as industry develops and tests new drugs. It can be purchased online at the NIST Store (shop.nist.gov).
The product consists of eight frozen vials of exhaustively studied human feces suspended in aqueous solution. Available are more than 25 pages of data identifying the key microbes and biomolecules in the material. Scientists, including those working at biopharmaceutical and biotech companies, can use this material to further their research and develop new drugs that target the