Trevor Lawley and his Sanger team are recognised globally for their discoveries including the first rationally designed bacteriotherapies, the first to address barrier to mass isolation of gut bacteria, to have substantially expanded the number of isolated species with reference genomes, and to demonstrate precision metagenomics at clinical scale.

Luis F. Camarillo-Guerrero, Alexandre Almeida, Guillermo Rangel-Pineros, Robert D. Finn, Trevor D. Lawley. 
Massive expansion of human gut bacteriophage diversity.
Cell VOLUME 184, ISSUE 4, P1098-1109.E9

Massive expansion of human gut bacteriophage diversity to create a new atlas for impact of phage on gut biology.

Samuel C. Forster, Simon Clare, Benjamin S. Beresford-Jones, Katherine Harcourt, George Notley, Mark Stares, Nitin Kumar, Amelia T. Soderholm, Anne Adoum, Hannah Wong, Bélen Morón, Cordelia Brandt, Gordon Dougan, David J. Adams, Kevin J. Maloy, Virginia A. Pedicord, Trevor D. Lawley. 
Novel gut pathobionts confound results in a widely used mouse model of human inflammatory disease.
bioRxiv 10.1101/2021.02.09.430393

 A major study of IBD disease mechanism in several hundred mice identified great variation in disease phenotype in the DSS model. The work demonstrated that resistance or sensitivity to the disease phenotype could be transferred by microbiota through faecal transplant in germ-free mice. Using mass culturing to isolate all the gut bacteria and machine learning to link bacteria to phenotype, the study identified a limited set of pathobionts that are sufficient to drive the disease phenotype.

Benjamin S. Beresford-Jones, Samuel C. Forster, Mark D. Stares, George Notley, Elisa Viciani, Hilary P. Browne, Nitin Kumar, Kevin Vervier, Alexandre Almeida, Trevor D. Lawley, Virginia A. Pedicord
Functional and taxonomic comparison of mouse and human gut microbiotas using extensive culturing and metagenomics.
bioRxiv 10.1101/2021.02.11.430759

Development of mouse microbiome genomics collection and biological comparison to human microbiome.

Lawley TD, Clare S, Walker AW, Stares MD, Connor TR, Raisen C, Goulding D, Rad R, Schreiber F, Brandt C et al
Targeted Restoration of the Intestinal Microbiota with a Simple, Defined Bacteriotherapy Resolves Relapsing Clostridium difficile Disease in Mice.
PLoS Pathogens 2012, 8(10)

First proof of concept for LBT using rational approach based on genomics, microbiology and animal models.

Browne HP, Forster SC, Anonye BO, Kumar N, Neville BA, Stares MD, Goulding D, Lawley TD
Culturing of ‘unculturable’ human microbiota reveals novel taxa and extensive sporulation.
Nature 2016, 533(7604):543-546

Turned over the dogma in field showing it is possible to culture and purify gut bacteria at large scale.*

Forster SC, Browne HP, Kumar N, Hunt M, Denise H, Mitchell A, Finn RD, Lawley TD
HPMCD: The database of human microbial communities from metagenomic datasets and microbial reference genomes.
Nucleic Acids Research 2016, 44(D1):D604-D609

Academic version of the platform from which early version of Microbiotica’s platform was developed.

Browne HP, Neville BA, Forster SC, Lawley TD
Transmission of the gut microbiota: Spreading of health.
Nature Reviews Microbiology 2017, 15(9):531-543

Neville BA, Forster SC, Lawley TD
Commensal Koch’s postulates: establishing causation in human microbiota research.
Current Opinion in Microbiology 2018, 42:47-52

Develops conceptual framework to establish causation in human microbiome research.

Thomas-White K, Forster SC, Kumar N, Van Kuiken M, Putonti C, Stares MD, Hilt EE, Price TK, Wolfe AJ, Lawley TD
Culturing of female bladder bacteria reveals an interconnected urogenital microbiota.
Nature Communications 2018, 9(1)

Applying expanding platform to other human body sites; culturing and human platform beyond the gut.

Almeida, A., Mitchell, A., Boland, M., Forster, S., Gloor, G., Tarkowska, A., Lawley, T. and Finn, R.
A new genomic blueprint of the human gut microbiota.
Nature 2019, 568(7753), pp.499-504

This publication identified the portion of the microbiome yet to be cultured and allowed Microbiotica to develop novel culturing for bugs. This publication is mentioned in Nature Milestones of human microbiota research.

Forster SC, Kumar N, Anonye BO, Almeida A, Viciani E, Stares MD, Dunn M, Mkandawire TT, Zhu A, Shao Y et al
A human gut bacterial genome and culture collection for improved metagenomic analyses.
Nature Biotechnology 2019, 574(7776):117-121

Demonstrates culturing abilities and validates the reference genome base mapping for human microbiome, therefore, increasing precision and accuracy and driving down computational costs. This publication was essential for the Nature Milestones of human microbiota research.

Shao Y1, Forster SC1,2,3, Tsaliki E4, Vervier K1, Strang A4, Simpson. N4, Kumar N1, Stares MD1, Rodger A4, Brocklehurst P5, Field N4, §, Lawley TD
Stunted microbiota and opportunistic pathogen colonisation associated with caesarean-section birth.
Nature 2019, 574: 117–121

First example of precision metagenomics platform in large scale human genetics population studies.

Kumar K1,*,§, Browne HP,*, Viciani E, Forster SC, Clare S, Harcourt K, Stares MD, Dougan G, Fairley DJ, Roberts P, Pirmohamed M, Clokie MRJ, Jensen MBF, Hargreaves KR, Ip M, Wieler LH, Seybold C, Norén T, Riley TV, Kuijper EJ, Wren BW, Lawley TD
Adaptation of Host Transmission Cycle During Pathogen Speciation.
Nature Genetics 2019, 51(9):1315-1320

Large scale genome analysis to define species and strain level specification.