Human oral microbiome: progress, challenge and opportunity

Abstract:

Oral diseases affect over half of world’s population and cost the health care the same budget as for the top ten mortality diseases. Moreover, oral infections are associated with systemic or chronic diseases such as preterm birth, atherosclerosis, cirrhosis, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. Hence, oral microbiome has always been one of the major targets of Human Microbiome Projects. Compared to other body sites, oral microbiome research is characterized by easily-accessible sampling, convenience in phenotyping host responses and directness and high efficacy of intervention approaches. In addition, over 65% of oral bacteria groups are deemed culturable, and genomes of representative strains from these groups have mostly been sequenced. Therefore, oral microbiome is becoming an exceptional research model and basis of technological demonstration for the fundamental questions of human microbiome research, such as inter-species interaction networks, impact of local infection on remote organs, and predictive modeling of chronic diseases, etc. By reviewing the recent scientific and technological progresses in oral microbiome study, here we advocate for the initiation of China Human Oral Microbiome Project (CHOMP), which calls for the collaborative and synergistic efforts from academic, clinical and industrial fronts for exploring and developing strategies and solutions for personalized prognosis, diagnosis and therapy for oral and systemic diseases based on oral microbiome.