Insights into the role of the microbiome in human disease represented one of the hottest tickets in town at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2017 in Chicago. Multiple biopharmas have efforts afoot to marshal the beneficial microorganisms that colonize the human body even though researchers are still endeavoring to show cause and effect between microbiota – the microorganisms that live in an established environment – and disease. One major question still confronting the field, for instance, is whether dysbiosis causes or results from intestinal inflammation, since the evidence doesn't yet point to an irrefutable conclusion.