The LOOP Zurich supports new research projects in personalized medicine

December 16, 2022

Zurich - The research center The LOOP Zurich is supporting two new data-sensitive projects in the area of personalized medicine. The first deals with recurring urinary tract infections, while the other seeks to help obese patients with a particular predisposition to secondary diseases.

The LOOP Zurich is supporting two new research projects for the development of personalized treatment approaches. These are focused on urinary tract infections and obesity. The mountains of data generated as part of these projects are to be structured with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Both projects were presented at a symposium on precision medicine held on December 13, further details of which can be found in a press release. The LOOP Zurich combines expertise from the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), in addition to the four university hospitals based in Zurich.

In the first project, which has been dubbed mTORUS (microbiome-based Therapeutic Options for Recurrent Urinary Syndromes), the aim is to investigate how the individual composition of the entire stock of beneficial and harmful bacteria, collectively referred to as the microbiome, differs in healthy people and those suffering from a urinary tract infection and whether this can be positively influenced. Successfully determining the composition of a healthy microbiome would open the door to transplantation of healthy microbiomes. The interaction of the bacteria with the immune system is also to be researched. In addition, modified bacterial phages developed at ETH Zurich should render infection-causing bacteria harmless. In this way, it is hoped that antibiotics could become a thing of the past. In addition, these phages are to be enhanced so as to support the immune system as well.

In the second project, known as LOOBesity, a research association is seeking to help the 10 percent of obesity sufferers that have above-average levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which fuels the emergence of additional diseases. For this, it is necessary to ascertain exactly what cortisol does in the fat cells it has damaged. Cortisol-modulating drugs may then also be used in this area. In addition, the researchers will aim to develop an imaging method for this pathologically altered metabolism that could eventually replace time-consuming, costly biopsies.