Megan Baldridge, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine at WashU Medicine, has received a four-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to study how bacteria living in the gut help the body maintain a healthy supply of blood cells. Low blood counts, called cytopenias, are a common complication of chemotherapy, transplant and long courses of antibiotics, and they leave patients vulnerable to serious infections.
Baldridge leads the project with Katherine King, MD, PhD, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, and Ritu Banerjee, MD, PhD, a professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Recent work by the team has linked antibiotic-induced bone marrow suppression to the loss of beneficial intestinal bacteria, providing evidence that the gut microbiome helps sustain blood counts. Now, working in mice, the researchers will seek to identify which gut bacteria and pathways contribute to normal blood cell production. They will also track how gut bacteria, blood counts and immune signals in the blood shift in children receiving long-term antibiotics.
Because the microbiome can be modified through diet, probiotics or other interventions, mapping these signals could point to ways to protect blood cell production in patients facing prolonged antibiotics, chemotherapy or a transplant.