Harvard Chan Microbiome in Public Health Center
“Understanding the microbiome may transform our understanding of how healthy bodies become diseased, how aging leads to infirmity, and how we could alter our internal ecosystems to prevent and treat a vast range of conditions.” — Michelle A. Williams, Former Dean, Harvard Chan School
677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115
The Microbiome and Public Health
Rapid increases in diseases influenced by the microbiome — including obesity, inflammatory bowel diseases, infectious disease, and cancer — have contributed to the urgency of research discovery in this area.
Each person hosts a unique, vast microbial ecosystem that adapts over time in response to our environment, diet, and lifestyle. These microbial communities in and on our bodies interact with our own cells and tissues, playing an essential role in human health, growth and development, aging, and disease susceptibility.
The burgeoning field of microbiome research provides a new way of framing key scientific questions through which we can better understand the factors that influence health, drive the development and progression of the disease, and shape early detection, prognostic, and treatment strategies.
The mission of the Harvard Chan Microbiome in Public Health Center (HCMPH) is to expand our understanding of the microbiome to improve population health, through basic research, translation, policy, education, and outreach.
This includes human microbiome contributions to and interactions with chronic disease, basic and infectious disease microbiology, molecular epidemiology, nutrition, environmental health, computational and quantitative methods, and public health policy and best practices. In our research, we aim to create tools, facilities, and resources to help advance microbiome science worldwide.
We welcome academic collaborations, industry partnerships, and feedback on any of our research or public initiatives.
Data and Resources
BIOM-Mass Data Portal
The BIOM-Mass Data Portal was created to manage and share data from microbiome epidemiology studies conducted by the HCMPH.
Human Microbiome Bioactives Resource
The HMBR flagship project aims to prioritize and validate novel therapeutics and therapeutic targets from the microbiome – from microbial strains to gene products to small molecules.
bioBakery
A suite of cutting-edge computational tools (complete with documentation and tutorials) for microbial community profiling and microbiome analysis developed by the Huttenhower lab.
Human Microbiome Project
Access comprehensive human microbiome datasets generated by the NIH’s Human Microbiome Project through the data portal.
BIOM-Mass Facilities
Backed by generous funding from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC), the BIOM-Mass (Biobank for Microbiome Research in Massachusetts) project is a collaboration with the Brigham and Womens Hospital and Harvard Cohorts Biorepository. BIOM-Mass comprises five major facilities for end-to-end microbiome collection, analysis, and research that supports large-scale microbiome studies, including a flagship collection of oral and gut microbiome samples from 25,000 participants in the Nurses’ Health Study II.
The Microbiome Collection Core at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HCMCC) was established in response to a strong demand among the research community for validated microbiome sample collection kit configurations and easy usability for in-home sampling. Under the umbrella of HCMPH, HCMCC currently supports 25 local and international projects comprising nearly 25,000 home stool and/or oral microbiome sample collection kits. Learn more about how the HCMCC can support your next microbiome project!
Population-scale microbiome sampling results in many thousands of oral and fecal microbiome sample aliquots that must be cataloged and stored for future sequencing and other analysis. Our BiOS Freezer Core automates the process of sample storage, tracking, and retrieval, and currently houses over 100,000 sample aliquots with space for many more.
The Harvard T.H. Chan Microbiome Analysis Core (HCMAC), established to advance the rapidly emerging field of microbiome science, aids in human microbiome study design and interpretation, helping researchers develop and apply quantitative methods to investigate the role of microbial community function in health. HCMAC provides a critical foundation for advancing the frontiers of human microbiome research, providing cutting-edge analytical tools and technologies needed to help scientists mine the extraordinarily rich and complex data that is central to microbiome discovery, research and development. Analysis experts at HCMAC partner with internal and external investigators for projects spanning human and animal microbiomes with dozens of different research interests. Learn more about HCMAC’s microbiome analysis services!
The Harvard Chan Gnotobiotic Facility houses mice that harbor defined microbial communities through highly controlled husbandry and monitoring procedures. Such animals can lack microbes (germ-free), contain microbes from a human donor sample (microbially ‘humanized’ mice), or be constructed with highly defined microbial communities ranging from one to hundreds of microbes. The study and use of such mice enables investigators to grow and expand microbes that will not grow in vitro and also enable the screening of bioactivity of microbes and microbial communities. Our Gnotobiotic Facility provides cutting-edge capabilities to generate and maintain gnotobiotic mice from a variety of genetic backgrounds, under varied environmental and dietary conditions, and for molecular and physiological readouts ranging from microbiome sequencing to histology and immunology.
The BIOM-Mass Data Portal was created to manage and share data from microbiome epidemiology studies conducted by the HCMPH. The data portal houses and provides access to raw and processed datasets including 16S rRNA gene amplicon profiles, metagenomes, metatranscriptomes, and metabolomes as well as information about the samples and subjects such as phenotypes, demographics, and technical protocols.