Microbiome Therapeutics Market Driven By Obesity

With the expanding push for healthy and organic foods, natural ingredients, and various options for physical fitness, it would seem that obesity would not be a huge issue today. However, right alongside these changes are also an increase in sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy food choices due to busy work lives, and these are gradually becoming the leading causes of obesity globally. Growing urbanization and hectic lifestyles are leading to the increasing preference for packaged and processed food as well as physical inactivity. This is where microbiome therapeutics come in, to help prevent and treat diabetes by regulating sugar levels. The microbiome is the collection of microorganisms found in and on all multicellular organisms, and in this case – those on and inside human bodies.

The microbiome therapeutics market consists of sales of microbiome therapeutics and related services, which are used to treat and prevent various diseases such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, C. difficile infection, and primary hyperoxyurea. The global microbiome therapeutics market was valued at about $0.31 billion in 2018 and is expected to grow to $1.28 billion at a whopping rate of 42.5% through 2022, as seen in Fig. 1. North America is the largest region in the microbiome therapeutics market and is also forecasted to register the highest growth rate during 2018-2023.

According to the report by World Health Organizations in 2016, 650 million people were obese and 41 million children under the age of 5 were diagnosed with obesity. This rising prevalence of obesity is why the sales of microbiome therapeutics in order to fight the problem.

Microbiome therapeutic companies are using phage therapy as their core technology in treatments due to its effectiveness in killing disease-causing bacteria in the human body. Phage therapy uses micro-organisms called bacteriophages to kill disease-causing bacteria by making their genetic material inactive. Companies such as Innophage and Enbiotix use phage therapy as their core technology to develop products that kill disease causing bacteria in humans. This treatment is very effective as compared to other microbiome therapeutics as it only focuses on the disease-causing bacteria and does not harm other beneficial micro-organisms in the microbiome, which are necessary for the healthy functioning of the human body, especially in the gut. “Good” microorganisms may also play a role against obesity, thus rendering this method valuable.