By Molly McDonough. Published by Harvard medicine, the magazine of Harvard Medical School

Each human body is home to trillions of microbes, whose combined cells may outnumber human cells. There’s no question that these microbiomes — the ecosystems of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes residing on and inside us — shape our health. But how, exactly, do they do it?

It’s a question that captivated Sloan Devlin when she was a young researcher fresh out of a PhD program in organic chemistry. It was the early 2010s, and Devlin had seen the many studies and headlines linking the microbiome with everything from autoimmune diseases to antibiotic resistance, metabolism, and even mood. But research explaining why those links existed seemed vanishingly sparse. That knowledge gap didn’t faze the budding scientist; instead, she says, it “seemed like a breath of fresh air.” She’d been searching for a way to put her chemistry knowledge to use to tackle big, unanswered questions in biology.

More than a decade later, she admits that the thought was rather naive. “There are huge challenges that come with entering a field that is so complex,” wrote Devlin, now an associate professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS, in 2022. “How do we begin to dissect the effects that hundreds of species of human-associated bacteria making thousands of molecules have on multifaceted diseases?”

It’s still an open question. But as more chemists like Devlin enter the field, they’ve helped propel microbiome research into a new phase: from raising suspicions that the microbial ecosystems within us profoundly influence our health to understanding the mechanisms through which they do it. What they’re discovering will be key to developing therapies that target the microbiome to improve health.

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The Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator has supported related research from Prof. Devlin’s lab. Harvard’s Office of Technology Development has protected a portfolio of intellectual property associated with Prof. Devlin’s research and is actively pursuing commercialization opportunities.