Advent of Pharmabiotics as a Promising Therapeutic Tool for Human Health and Diseases Management

With the recent advances in understanding the role of the gut microbiome and human health, it has become evident that pharmabiotics have huge potential in the therapeutics as well as supplement industries for conditions leading to impaired microbiota. Pharmabiotics can be referred to as a class of microbial therapeutic probiotics which could be live bacterial cells of human origin or their products with clinically proven pharmacological activities found to be beneficial in human disease conditions. So, the mechanism by which bacteria produce synergistic beneficial effects on health could help us to develop a scheme to understand the delicate relationship between the gut microbiome and human health. In this chapter, we will emphasize the role of gut microbiota, the pharmabiotics they produce and how it affects different physiological and metabolic and host-microbe interactions leading to the production of bioactive chemicals with health benefits, eventually leading to the establishment of a healthy immune system. The chapter will also discuss the repercussions of disturbed gut microbiota on overall human health, including host psychiatric health. The fact that pharmabiotics acting as antimicrobial agents will produce no resistant variety is also an added bonus that increases the scope for discovery of such novel therapeutic agents.

Keywords: Antimicrobial, Bifidobacterium, Faecal matter transplant, Firmicutes, Gastrointestinal tract, Genetically modified probiotics, Gut-brain axis, Gut microbiome, Host-microbe interaction, Infection control, Lactobacillus, Lifestyle disorders, Microbiota, Obesity, Pharmabiotics, Probiotics, Probiotics for cancer, Prophylactic, Short-chain fatty acids, Therapeutic potential.