Cecal microbiome transplantation without antibiotic preconditioning standardizes murine microbiomes

Translation of nonclinical findings from laboratory mice to the clinic may be confounded by uncontrolled variance in bacterial gut content, as a driver of immune maturation and recruitment, as well as drug metabolism. Understanding and controlling for microbiome variation in animal experiments can lead to better reproducibility of animal findings, more translatable characterization of efficacy and toxicity end-points and time and cost savings associated with pharmaceutical development. Microbiome composition has been linked to failure of translation of drug responses. In an effort to test the stability of microbiome introduction, we compare various methods for establishing a well-characterized, stable bacterial community in laboratory mice via Cecal Microbiome Transplant (CMT) with and without antibiotic preconditioning.