: Within the last two decades tremendous efforts in biomedicine have been undertaken to
understand the interplay of commensal bacteria living in and on our human body with our own
human physiology. It became clear that (1) a high diversity especially of the microbial communities
in the gut are important to preserve health and that (2) certain bacteria via nutrition-microbe-host
metabolic axes are beneficially affecting various functions of the host, including metabolic control,
energy balance and immune function. While a large set of evidence indicate a special role for small
chain fatty acids (SCFA) in that context, recently also metabolites of amino acids (e.g., tryptophan and
arginine) moved into scientific attention. Of interest, microbiome alterations are not only important
in nutrition associated diseases like obesity and diabetes, but also in many chronic inflammatory,
oncological and neurological abnormalities. From a clinician’s point of view, it should be mentioned,
that the microbiome is not only interesting to develop novel therapies, but also as a modifiable factor
to improve efficiency of modern pharmaceutics, e.g., immune-therapeutics in oncology. However, so
far, most data rely on animal experiments or human association studies, whereas controlled clinical
intervention studies are spare. Hence, the translation of the knowledge of the last decades into
clinical routine will be the challenge of microbiome based biomedical research for the next years. This
review aims to provide examples for future clinical applications in various entities and to suggest
bacterial species and/or microbial effector molecules as potential targets for intervention studies. CLICK TO REVIEW