The last decade has seen the microbiome emerge as a crucial factor in human health and disease, contributing to susceptibility to infectious pathogens, poor reproductive outcomes, cancer, cardiometabolic diseases, allergies, autism, and obesity. Questions are being asked about the role that geography, diet, exercise, socioeconomic status, antibiotic use, and pollution play in the human microbiome. Recognising its transformative potential, funding agencies in the UK and USA have, over the past five years, developed strategic plans for investing in microbiome research.

Although these initiatives have yielded much data in wealthy, industrialised regions, relatively little progress has been made in uncovering the role of microbial diversity in health and disease in other regions, including Africa. These ‘missing microbiomes’ may have major implications for health and disease, running the risk of excluding African populations from groundbreaking microbiome research that is ongoing, and thus microbiome data from Africa are critical for developing interventions relevant to African populations

VMRC4Africa aims to develop a network of African researchers working to understand the geographical variation of vaginal microbiotas across Africa. With an observational trial based in Kenya and South Africa, we aim to characterize vaginal microbiotas and survey cervicovaginal inflammation by 16S rRNA sequencing and Luminex, with the ultimate goal of curating a biorepository which is representative of African women. The geographical impact on vaginal microbiotas will then be further elucidated as VMRC4Africa expands into sites in Central and West Africa.

Isolates from women across Africa with stable communities of Lactobacillus crispatus will be investigated for their potential use as a combination live biotherapeutic to promote optimal vaginal microbiomes. Phenotypic and genotypic variation of these stable isolates will be compared to other isolates from across African regions and the Global North, aiding in the development a multi-strain biotherapeutic representative of diverse geographical regions.