Congratulations to Fatma Abdi for best poster award!
Human microbiome is famously known for its benefits to our health, however few bacteria survive the manufacturing process. Fatma is working on a novel approach to improve bacterial survival by encapsulating aqueous suspensions of live bacteria inside a functional composite capsule.
The bacteria tend to die during traditional harsh manufacturing process (e.g. freeze drying or compression), which forces the producer to increase bacterial loads in the dosage form, or to use more invasive delivery methods. Fatma's work focuses on engineering capsules to deliver live bacterial suspensions, which could be an efficient and non-invasive alternative to fecal matter transplantation.
She created a composite capsule that can resist pH changes throughout the entire gastrointestinal tract, and breaks inside of the colon after reaching a certain pressure. In the future, she will be adding an additional property to these capsules - oxygen diffusion resistance, to potentially protect all the anaerobic strains.