Levi Waldron
Co-PI (Core Leadership)
CUNY School of Public Health
Professor Waldron received a BSc in physics from the University of British Columbia, an MSc in physics from the University of Waterloo, and a PhD in wood science from the University of Toronto.
He developed his interest in biostatistics and public health during post-docs at the Ontario Cancer Institute, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Harvard School of Public Health, before joining the faculty at CUNY.
Recent ASAP Preprints & Published Papers
Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, depleted in the Parkinson's disease microbiome, improves motor deficits in α-synuclein overexpressing mice
Gut microbiome composition is altered in Parkinson's disease (PD), a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor dysfunction and frequently accompanied by gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms. Notably, microbial taxa with anti-inflammatory properties are consistently depleted in PD patients compared to controls. To explore whether specific gut bacteria may be disease-protective, we assembled a microbial consortium of 8 human-associated taxa that are reduced in individuals with PD across multiple cohorts and geographies. Treatment of α-synuclein overexpressing (Thy1-ASO) mice, an animal model of PD, with this consortium improved motor and GI deficits. A single bacterial species from this consortium, *Faecalibacterium prausnitzii*, was sufficient to correct gut microbiome deviations in Thy1-ASO mice, induce anti-inflammatory immune responses, and promote protective colonic gene expression profiles. Accordingly, oral treatment with *F. prausnitzii* robustly ameliorated motor and GI symptoms and reduced α-synuclein aggregates in the brain. These findings support the emerging hypothesis of functional contributions by the microbiome to PD and embolden development of potential probiotic therapies.
BugSigDB - Parkinson's Disease
BugSigDB.org (published in Nature Biotechnology) is a community-editable Semantic Mediawiki knowledge management system. Its primary functions include 1. standardization of key elements of published microbiome studies using ontologies and the NCBI taxonomy, 2. searchability, 3. Enrichment Analysis using bulk exports, GMT files, or other software (e.g. bugsigdbr), and 4. community interaction: you can request an account, contribute or analyze, learn about the project, report issues, and ask questions on the #bugsigdb channel of the community-bioc Slack team. This collaborative effort aims to accelerate microbiome research by providing a comprehensive database of microbial signatures from published studies, along with relevant information on study design and geography, health outcomes, host body site, and experimental methods. Here is the Parkinson's Disease Search on the db using this consitions (link to the search): https://bugsigdb.org/Main_Page SOP for using BugSigDB for PD research: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tuUCsazhFUOeA3I98g5uC7oz1FECf45fcXZje07lG0M/edit?usp=sharing
