Over the past decade, researchers around the world have been getting serious about understanding how the microbes that live in and on us affect disease and health. Industry is now ramping up its investment into this space as well. Janssen, which has already partnered with the microbiome-focused biotechs Vedanta Biosciences and Second Genome, took its microbiome ambitions to the next level earlier this year by creating the Janssen Human Microbiome Institute. Heading the Institute is Dirk Gevers, a computational biologist who was formerly a group leader at the Broad Institute, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a researcher on the Human Microbiome Project. The microbiome offers opportunity across therapeutic areas and drug modalities, he tells Asher Mullard.