Dr. Jeffrey Gladden describes a therapy that captures beneficial bacteria from donor stool, freeze-dries and encapsulates them in acid-resistant capsules that release in the intestines. It replicates fecal transplant benefits without the actual feces, avoiding genetic material concerns and side effects.
There's been traumatic success with people transplanting a healthy fecal donor into a sick person, and they can actually cure C. diff, right? So this is a mechanism similar without the poop. So let's pretend—
as you're telling me this, I'm thinking this is like a fecal transplant without having to do a fecal transplant, right?
Correct. So you don't have any of the negative side effect, potentially some of the genetic DNA expressions, things that sometimes come with these fecal transplants, but they have in layman's terms, taken the bacteria out of the poop, freeze-dried it in such temperatures that it cannot be toxic, but you're getting the benefit of that bacteria. And then they encapsulate it in a way after several steps, I think it's 6 or 7 steps, that they can put it in a capsule and can go all the way down your gut. Acid doesn't touch it, nothing touches it. Once it gets down there in that pH that it likes, it can kind of engraft itself or plant its own seed. Now, if you provide it with the right nutrients and fertilizer, now it's going to really grow.
