How to Recruit and Engage Stool Donors

Stool banking depends on a pool of committed and healthy stool donors. Building a sustainable donor pool can be difficult as less than 3% of prospective donors may pass health screenings, necessitating a large recruitment effort. This paper reviews several considerations for recruiting stool donors including guidance on advertising, designing incentives, and maintaining clear communication with prospective and active donors.

Clinical Considerations for Donor Screening

Evaluating the health of stool donors providing Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT) material is a crucial and dynamic aspect of stool banking. Donor selection criteria may vary depending on multiple factors such as geography and patient population, and is continually being updated to reflect the latest understanding of FMT and the microbiome. This paper reviews clinical considerations underlying donor selection using OpenBiome’s screening criteria as an example.

From Stool Donation to FMT Preparation: The Logistics of FMT Manufacturing

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) preparations comprise minimally processed stool that retain a broad fraction of the stool donor’s complete microbiome. In clinical trials and real-world settings, FMT has been shown to treat approximately 80% of antibiotic-resistant C. difficile infections and is the standard of treatment for recurrent C. difficile. This paper, using OpenBiome as an example, reviews important considerations for manufacturing FMT preparations including safety and operational measures.

Note: Considerations for donor screening are covered separately in a white paper titled “Clinical Considerations for Donor Selection”

When is an FMT Treatment Ready for Use? Health Monitoring and Material Release

Stool banking is a complex, multi-step process that includes screening and monitoring donor health as well as manufacturing fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) preparations from donated stool. To help ensure that FMT preparations meet the stool bank’s quality and safety standards, a Quality Department reviews all information associated with an FMT preparation and its donor to verify that it is suitable for patient treatment. This paper outlines and discusses basic quality checks that FMT material should pass before it is released for clinical use.

Tracking Patient Outcomes and Adverse Events: Considerations for Pharmacovigilance

Detection and response to reported safety events is one of a stool bank's most important roles. A robust material tracking and pharmacovigilance program enables timely responses to suspected adverse events including safety measures to mitigate risk to patients receiving FMT at centers being supplied by the stool bank. This paper presents OpenBiome's material tracking and pharmacovigilance program as an example for surveilling patient responses to FMT.