After the Human Genome Project success, at the beginning of 21st century, the scientific community agreed the human microbiome was a major challenge in medical research. As many of the bacteria integrating it could not be cultivated in a petri dish in a lab, little was known about this huge community of microorganisms inhabiting our body. It began to be suspected they played a key role in health but also in disease. At that time, 10 years ago, the United States Institutes of Health decided to launch the Human Microbiome Project, in which took part several biomedical research institutes.
Almost at the same time, in Europe, MetaHit was conceived, although unlike the American project, it focused in the link between microbiota and two more and more common diseases, obesity and type 2 diabetes. And finally, and fruit of the collaboration between Chinese and French scientists, the Chinese Microbiome Project was set up; its main goal was to understand the obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemics in the Asian country.
The main researchers behind those successful and ambitious projects attended the Gut Microbiota for Health World Summit held in Paris, in March 2017, where we could interview them.