Chris Stewart

I have an open BBSRC PhD position in my lab at @northumbriauni.bsky.social to start Oct 2026

This exciting project will focus on the Resistance, resilience, & redundancy in the human gut microbiome

This is part in collaboration with the fantastic @stewartlab.bsky.social

Project details ⤵️

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Introducing a new gut microbiology journal, aptly titled Gut Microbiology.

All Article Publishing Charges (APCs) are waived for 2 years!

Please send your exciting research our way.

www.sciencedirect.com/journal/gut-...

The @stewartlab.bsky.social use systems biology and cutting-edge human intestinal organoid models to understand diet-microbe-host interaction across the life course, with the ambition to discover novel therapies to improve gut health.

www.ncl.ac.uk/medical-scie...

www.neonatalresearch.net

Introducing a new gut microbiology journal, aptly titled Gut Microbiology.

All Article Publishing Charges (APCs) are waived for 2 years!

Please send your exciting research our way.

www.sciencedirect.com/journal/gut-...

Led by Emily Wroot, I present our recent Comment in @natmicrobiol.nature.com

"Opportunities for microbiome-based therapeutics in preterm infants"

Hopefully this provides a timely insight for clinicians and researchers interested in preterm infants, and beyond!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you ☺️

Many congratulations @stewartlab.bsky.social on this amazing achievement - so richly deserved - #BlavatnikAwards Life Sciences Laureate 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 🎉

Very happy for you and great interview 👇🏾

In our latest blog post we catch up with #BlavatnikAwards Life Sciences Laureate @stewartlab.bsky.social, who recently attended the Blavatnik Awards ceremony and public symposium and gave talks about his preventive health work on preterm infant microbiomes 🫄👶 lister-institute.org.uk/congratulati...

Thank you!

The amazing Prof Chris Stewart @stewartlab.bsky.social gives his inaugural lecture👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

We had the pleasure of interviewing Chris earlier this week for the Lister Institute blog, and were excited to learn about his team's new preprint: a game-changer in understanding how human breast milk influences the infant microbiome.

Person wearing a black tuxedo and bow tie, smiling in front of a banner with the logos. They are adorned with a medal on a yellow ribbon.

🎉 Congratulations to @stewartlab.bsky.social who has been named the Life Sciences Laureate at the 2025 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK 🎖️

Read more 👇
www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articl...

#WeAreNCL

Human microbiome researcher honoured with prestigious award A leading young scientist is the first at Newcastle University to win an esteemed Blavatnik award.

Huge congratulations to our colleague Professor Chris Stewart on receiving the esteemed Life Sciences Laureate at the Blavatnik Awards 2025!

This is a first for @newcastleuni.bsky.social and we couldn't be more proud of Chris & his ground-breaking research!

tinyurl.com/LaureateAward

AMI member Christopher Stewart named as finalist in 2025 UK Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Applied Microbiology International member Dr Christopher Stewart of Newcastle University has been named as a finalist for the eighth Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK. He is the 2023 win...

Congratulations to AMI member Dr Christopher Stewart of @newcastleuni.bsky.social who has been named as a finalist in the eighth Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK! He is the 2023 winner of AMI’s WH Pierce Prize for microbiology.

www.the-microbiologist.com/news/ami-mem...

Fabulous meeting in Hong Kong by the New Cornerstone Science Foundation. It was great to meet so many researchers in person whose work I have admired for some time. Thanks for having me!

Really enjoyable discussion. Well done, Dolan!

Main take-homes:
1) Clostridium lacking pfoA toxin may be beneficial to preterm health as a probiotic or postbiotic
2) Where infants are potentially colonised with pathogenic pfoA+ C. perf, these results caution against widespread HMO supplementation (e.g., of formula milk)

This work is only possible because of the amazing clinical team in Newcastle RVI. The Sanger team for the genome work. The whole of my team at @newcastleuni.bsky.social team for driving. And @wellcometrust.bsky.social and the Lister Institute for funding.

There is lots more in the preprint so please do take a look. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Given pfoA+ C. perf damages the epithelum, we explored competitive exclusion using live organoid co-culture. This revealed that pre-culture with pfoA- C. perf protects the preterm gut against pathogenic pfoA+ C. perf.

We found that generally the CFS from pfoA- C. perf could suppress the pro-inflammatory response in stimulated organoids. There was also no adverse impacts on inflammation from this CFS.

This is all very exciting for a potential therapy, but not if it negatively impacts the host. To study this we used preterm intestinal organoids and the recently developed co-culture system that accurately recapitulates O2 levels across the epithelium

... but promoted the growth of naturally occurring infant B. breve and B. longum (though not probiotic derived B. infantis). Because the CFS was harvested after growth on glucose, this is not explained purely by cross-feeding of LNT and other HMO degradation products

Now we wanted to see what impact cell free supernatant (CFS) from C. perf would have on infant gut microbiome development. Jon Chapman found it inhibited the growth of preterm infant pathobionts...

Side step into some biochemistry - We found C. perf is able to use the sialic acid from DSLNT, but generally can not use LNT, which it "cross-feeds" to Bifidobacterium. The full digestion of DSLNT by C. perf was possible only when the β 1-3 bond was cleaved first.

We therefore focused on a pfoA- C. perf isolate for further investigation, owing to it being in the hypovirulent linage V, lacking the pfoA toxin gene, its ability to use health-associated DSLNT, and its production of several beneficial SCFAs and metabolites

Fantastic work by @halllab.bsky.social @raymondkiu.bsky.social showed C. perf carry the perfringolysin O (pfoA) gene is linked to disease, but an absence of this toxin places C. perf in the hypovirulent (i.e., health-associated) lineage.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Because HMOs are abundant prebiotics in human milk, bacteria that could metabolise them were assumed to be beneficial. e.g., Bifidobacterium sp. is the leading probiotic candidate in babies and are especially adapted to use HMOs. But this is where the nuance comes in.

The work started with Andrea finding Clostridium perfringens (C. perf) cultured from a preterm infant could grow on a range of HMOs. We expanded this into other infant Clostridium isolates and Greg also found C. perf is more prevalent in healthy preterm infants.

Introducing our latest preprint which discovered Clostridium sp. grow on HMOs. Using computational and experimental approaches we show this has beneficial consequences for the developing microbiome and the host. But there is nuance.

A 🧵...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...