Our Science
Antibiotics save lives, but they also deplete the community of protective bacteria that live in a healthy gut. When that protective community is lost, infection-causing organisms (like Enterobacterales and Enterococcus) take over. These bacteria proliferate in the gut before causing many of the bloodstream, urinary tract, respiratory, and surgical site infections that patients develop in the hospital.
An infant’s gut starts nearly empty. In the first months of life, human milk oligosaccharides selectively feed a small set of beneficial bacteria, letting them colonize and establish dominance before other organisms arrive. Antibiotic treatment creates a similar open window in an adult gut — clearing out the existing bacterial community and leaving it available to whichever organisms colonize first.
KeepBio uses the same colonization strategy nature relies on in infancy: delivering that bacterium alongside the human milk oligosaccharides it exclusively feeds on, so beneficial bacteria have the advantage in recognizing the gut after antibiotic-induced dysbiosis. It helps the microbiome recover before infection-causing organisms can take hold.
Publications
KeepBio's approach is grounded in peer-reviewed research led by our co-founders and published in Cell Host & Microbe.
BUTTON ET AL.
Dosing a synbiotic of human milk oligosaccharides and B. infantis leads to reversible engraftment in healthy adult microbiomes without antibiotics.
Cell Host & Microbe, 2022; 30, 712-725.e7
BUTTON ET AL.
Precision modulation of dysbiotic adult microbiomes with a human-milk-derived synbiotic reshapes gut microbial composition and metabolites.
Cell Host & Microbe, 2023; 31, 1523-1538.e10
