An In Vitro Enrichment Strategy for Formulating Synergistic Synbiotics

This study describes anin vitro enrichment method to formulate synergistic synbiotics that have potential for establishing autochthonous strains across multiple individuals. The rationale for this approach—that the chance of survival of a bacterial strain is improved by providing it with its required resources—is based on classic ecological theory. From these experiments, a human-derived strain,Bifidobacterium longum subsp.longum CR15, was identified as a xylooligosaccharide (XOS) fermenter in fecal environments and displayed synergistic effectsin vitro . The high rate of strain establishment observed in this study provides a basis for using synergistic synbiotics to overcome the responder/nonresponder phenomenon that occurs frequently in clinical trials with probiotic and prebiotic interventions. In addition, this approach can be applied in other protocols that require enrichment of specific bacterial populations prior to strain isolation.