Curtis Huttenhower
Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada in Microbiome Sciences
Dr. Curtis Huttenhower is a global leader in using computational methods to study the functions and biological activities of microbial communities, especially the microbiome — the microorganisms that live in and on the human body. His work has deepened our understanding of microbiome health, as well as fostered the scientific community and tools that now exist to study microbial communities.
Dr. Huttenhower helped lay the groundwork that relates microbiome ecology to health and disease. The computational tools his group developed are used by thousands of labs worldwide. He has both led and contributed to large-scale international consortia studying human microbiome health and function, and these in turn have produced research data resources used across the field. Together, these advances have helped move microbiome research beyond simply identifying which organisms are present, to understanding how they function, affect human health and contribute to disease.
Dr. Huttenhower’s work now explores the specific biochemistry and genetics that maintain "healthy" microbial communities both on and around the human body, relating our own microorganisms to those we encounter from our environment, pets, food and other exposures. That shift in the field — from cataloguing microbes to understanding what they do — is what lets us turn knowledge into products and practices that keep people healthier and safer.
What is the main challenge your Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada program is addressing, and how are you approaching it?
Modern studies of the human microbiome began around 20 years ago. In the past decade, the field has developed increasingly precise knowledge about its roles in health, nutrition, aging and a wide range of diseases. This foundation of basic biology and ecology has been difficult to translate into concrete products, however, particularly at the intersection of the human microbiome with the rest of the microbial world that surrounds us. Our own microbial communities alongside those of our homes, offices, food, pets, livestock and agriculture make up the microanthrome — and they can remind us that humans are relative newcomers in a world that is fundamentally microbial. My research program aims to take what we have learned about our ubiquitous microbial surroundings and build it into interventions that can be deployed and used.
At least three lines of research are needed to achieve these goals. First, we can now often identify which microorganisms or biochemistries are "important" in a given setting, but not necessarily how microbes do what they do. A system with tens of thousands of proteins and molecules needs both artificial intelligence and high-throughput experiments, working together, to figure out which of them might matter in conditions like chronic inflammatory diseases or cancer. Second, while the field has become good at identifying when ecologies are broken, there are few methods that can then determine how best to fix them — via changes in diet, live biotherapeutics, pharmaceuticals or other interventions. Finally, the microanthrome is full of places to put this to work — from precision health to veterinary care to food chain safety. Some of the most useful clues come from unexpected places; for example, the chronic kidney disease that's common in cats is driven by the same microbial chemistry as in people, so studying one helps both.
What is the main thing you would like to achieve as an Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada, and what are the potential impacts of your work?
My overall goal is to establish Canada as a global hub for turning microbiome "big data" into concrete therapies, products, practices and environmental standards. Canada is well suited to this, with public health systems that can support population-scale data. British Columbia's agriculture, aquaculture and forestry also naturally integrate the human-adjacent aspects of the microanthrome. That allows us to treat it as one connected system — people, the places they live, and the microbial traffic running between them — and turn what we learn from it into things that work: better treatments, happier pets, safer food and water.
All science takes a village, and microbiome science more than most. That's why I am excited to launch the Microanthrome Systems & Engineering Center (MSEC) at UBC — a shared home for the people, platforms and training this work needs, from basic discovery through to building things that reach the public. The university is already home to a stellar combination of microbial scientists, and the centre will help enrich that community and expand it with future faculty and trainees. Our plan is to start with microbial areas where the science is already closest to paying off, including gynecological cancers, diet-microbiome interactions, veterinary practice and environmental monitoring and biosecurity.
What is your primary motivation behind the research you do? What drew you to this work?
I've studied microbial communities for my entire faculty career, and I'm looking forward to continuing to do so. They represent both a fun intellectual challenge (they're complicated!) and a historically untapped area with real potential for improving health and society. For example, we've known about fecal transplants for over a thousand years, but the first standardized version only came to market a few years ago. We're just seeing the beginning of rapid progress in the field.
What drew you to UBC to do this work, and what are you most looking forward to about coming here?
UBC has unique potential at the intersection of human and "human-adjacent" microbial communities, particularly with respect to implementation science. Very few institutions globally have deep expertise simultaneously in human health, the environments people build and live in, and engineering. I'm most excited about the researchers here and the potential to work with such a broad community able to make a real difference turning microbiome knowledge into concrete interventions.
What does it mean to you to have been appointed as an Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada, and how is it going to help you advance your already internationally recognized research?
Given the shifting perspectives on science around the world, the Eddie Goldenberg Research Chairs of Canada program overall shows Canada's commitment to research, academia and innovation now and in the future. I'm excited to be in a place — both nationally and locally — that values the community, diversity and collaboration necessary for real progress. Microbiome science is especially interdisciplinary, and the chair provides the scale to build teams and programs that can truly accelerate implementation of microbial community discoveries for everyone's benefit.
