What's going on in the gastrointestinal tract of yours? Evidence is mounting that the gut and the microbes that live there play an important role in a lot of health issues. With the help of 15 million dollars and a lot of poop, a startup called Persephone is building a library of the human microbiome and assembling a best-of list of helpful life forms.
A new generation of companies has arisen because of the democratization of once exclusive and expensive tools. It is taking a closer look at how the unique set of microorganisms that live in and on our body and perform various tasks for mutual benefit differ and what that means for our health.
Genomatica had a background in genetic work where they were working on producing chemicals normallysourced from petroleum by modifyingbacteria to make them.
She said that it took 5 years of genetic engineering but it worked. We are doing the same thing with the same tools. We used to map a single microbe, but now we are doing it with more than one.
She said there was a lack of fundamental understanding. Despite the fact that it is involved in many processes, there is not enough data to answer questions like how the microbiome affects disease progress, the effectiveness of therapy, and the development of the immune system. It's difficult to collect enough research material.
There is an all-in-one "poop kit."
The company has trained machine learning models on large datasets it has compiled itself through laborious collection of stool samples from a large number of people
There is a stigma when it comes to giving poop samples. We focused on how to do it quickly. The initial funds we received through Y Combinator set us up to develop that infrastructure to get large volumes of patient data.
A lot of other health records were combined with the data from the isolated and cataloged microbes. Machine learning is an efficient way of sorting through that kind of noisy data, and it identified both patterns worth investigating.
A strain of bacterium may die out in the gut before a colorectal cancer diagnosis. What's the reason? You don't have to be aware of that early marker to save lives. What if it could be brought back to life? It could have a positive effect on the body.
There is a consensus set of good functions that you want when you have different strains of the samebacteria. They may be completely missing in disease studies.
The image is titled "Persepaphone Biome."
She said that as we get older, our diet changes, we take antibiotics, and the microbiome disappears. We are trying to round up all the right microbes, one size fits all, trained on our data, consensus set of organisms that everyone needs, and one super pill that is a new category of probiotics.
It is more complex than that. A superhero set would be helpful to anyone regardless of age or condition.
You might be wondering how these are different from what's out there. Those can be helpful, but they are not our local microfauna.
Many of the strains on the market are from milk-based products and are not actually members of the gut microbiome. There were only 29 strains of the same strain that were analyzed. There's no superhero.
Compare that to the thousands of candidates they have identified, all of which are from people and reflect a modern diet. It is possible to have the best of breed from actual humans.
There are two ways in which the company hopes to go over the next year. The only thing that needs to be tested and found to be safe is the probiotic supplement. General health benefits are suggested but no therapeutic claims are made, so this is the same as any other supplement.
The supplements would first be used for children with incomplete gut microbiomes due to things like c-sections and antibiotics. As helpful as those things are, they seem to work to the disadvantage of the gut, which may contribute to the increase in allergies. Any new parent could use a shelf-stable liquid Probiotic Additive.
An employee is working in the lab.
A large new partnership in infant health and a new nationwide study will be announced by Persephone in the near future. It's easy to collect baby poop. Parents have too much.
Over time, the company would scale up to older ages and adults and investigate specific applications of the microbes.
The other way forward is applying microbes to cancer treatment, where it is thought that it could enhance the effect of immunotherapy drugs. The type of thing that needs more serious FDA approval is this one.
In the next year and a half, we want to be in the clinic, and we will definitely be in it in 2024 for lung cancer. The gut-brain axis is important for any disease and superbugs are important for that.
There is a new collaboration with Ginkgo Bioworks on synthetic bio tech and ARGONAUT, a large-scale study of the gut-immune axis. There is a lot on the company's plate, so don't be surprised if you see some studies with some regularity.
The fifteen million dollar seed round was co-led by First Bight Venture and Propel Bio Partners, with participation from Y Combinator, Fifty Years, Susa Venture, American Cancer Society's BrightEdge Fund, Pioneer Fund, and ZhenFund.
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