can treat the baby while the baby is still 
in utero, it’s much more effective and less 
invasive than treating after birth.”
Although technology plays an important 
role in her research, Kissler sees it as a tool 
to strengthen, not replace, the human side 
of patient care.
“I hope AI can support some of the uncer­
tainty in decision-making and leave me 
with more time to sit with my patients,” 
she says.
Applying a New Parent’s 
Perspective to Study the 
Infant Microbiome
For Olm, the path to his current research 
became personal after becoming a father.
“I was trying to think about everything I 
could do to support her while I was reading 
all of these microbiome studies,” says Olm.
That experience deepened his interest in 
the infant microbiome, the vast community 
of bacteria, fungi, and other microorgan­
isms that live in and on the human body. 
Research has shown that the microbiome 
plays an important role in digestion, 
immune system development, and overall 
health, making its earliest formation a crit­
ical window for study.
“Babies are born without a microbiome at 
all,” Olm says. “They’re essentially starting 
from a blank slate.”
During the first several years of life, the 
immune system undergoes a critical 
training period that helps shape how it will 
function for decades.
“The immune system is learning what’s a 
good bacterium, what’s a bad bacterium, 
and what’s a human cell,” Olm says. This 
process, and the role the infant micro­
biome may play in shaping it, has become 
a central focus of Olm’s work.
“It seems pretty compelling that this 
process relies on having a healthy infant 
microbiome,” Olm says.
Today, Olm compares infant microbiomes 
in the Denver Metro Area with those of 
infants in rural Nepal to better understand 
why immune diseases such as asthma, 
allergies, and autoimmune disorders are 
significantly more common in industrial­
ized societies.
“One of the big questions is what aspect of 
the modern lifestyle is leading to these dra­
matically higher rates of immune disease,” 
he says.
In some traditional communities, those 
conditions remain remarkably rare. 
According to Olm, some traditional and 
hunter-gatherer communities don’t 
even have words for diseases like asthma 
because they are so uncommon.
The observation has shaped the central 
question behind his research: what 
changed, and can any of it be restored?
“We’re not trying to alter human biology,” 
Olm says. “We’re trying to bring the 
immune system back to how it functioned 
before industrialization. We’re trying to 
understand what was lost and whether we 
can bring some of it back.”
One clue may lie in Bifidobacterium 
infantis, a bacterium that is common in 
many non-industrialized communities but 
increasingly rare among infants in the U.S.
“Less than 10% of babies in America have 
Bifidobacterium infantis, whereas in many 
non-industrialized communities nearly 
every baby has it,” Olm says.
Although just one species among many, 
this bacterium has an outsized influ­
ence on the development of the broader 
microbial community. Olm describes 
Bifidobacterium infantis as a “keystone 
member” of the microbiome, meaning 
its presence may help shape many of 
the other microbes that establish them­
selves during early life. Olm and other 
researchers are studying whether the 
loss of microbes like Bifidobacterium 
infantis may contribute to changes in 
immune system development that could 
influence the risk of conditions such as 
asthma, allergies, and autoimmune disease 
later in life.
Olm witnessed the influence of 
Bifidobacterium infantis firsthand after 
giving his daughter a probiotic containing 
the bacterium.
“I expected the probiotic to have a small 
effect, but I was amazed,” he says. “Eighty 
percent of the microbes in her gut became 
that single organism.”
Ultimately, Olm hopes the research can 
help identify ways to proactively support 
healthy immune development.
“The goal is to prevent immune disease 
before it ever starts,” he says.
Do infants from 
Colorado cities or rural 
Nepal have stronger 
microbiomes? 
Olm’s research may 
pinpoint the drivers 
of immune diseases.
44     2026-27 BIOSCIENCE COLORADO

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