CHICAGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–BiomeSense, a biotech company unlocking the vast health benefits of the microbiome through novel “smart bathroom” hardware technology and advanced bioinformatics, announced the close of its oversubscribed $3 million funding round. Led by Bluestein Ventures, the financing includes new investor Harvest Ridge Capital along with participation from existing investors SOSV and Seerave Foundation, underscoring their continued confidence in BiomeSense’s mission. This new financing will support BiomeSense’s commercial launch, anticipated within the year.
BiomeSense is developing the first dedicated tools to help fully unlock microbiome precision medicine. Despite significant interest in the microbiome’s potential to improve human health, its complex nature coupled with a lack of effective measurement tools have made it difficult to understand, leaving much of the microbiome’s scientific and commercial promise untapped—until now.
Seizing this opportunity, BiomeSense’s revolutionary “smart bathroom” technology, GutLab, and bioinformatics platform, MetaBiome, make generating and analyzing large-scale, time-series microbiome datasets not only possible, but cost effective. The company is partnering with leading scientists to deploy the platform across a range of clinical studies to create the industry’s first curated time-series microbiome database. This unprecedented resource will set new standards for microbiome precision medicine, from basic research through commercial product development.
“Multiple studies have shown the microbiome is the portal to overall health and wellness, including the ability to predict a person’s response to a particular medicine and helping patients better manage conditions such as diabetes or celiac disease,” said Kevin Honaker, BiomeSense Co-Founder and CEO. “While we know these possibilities exist, data barriers have blocked the industry from fully harnessing the microbiome’s potential. Now, thanks to our funders’ confidence, we can launch our technology and access the microbiome’s full precision medicine promise.”
BiomeSense’s breakthrough technology will allow continuous microbiome tracking—even in the comfort of someone’s home—enabling unprecedented insight into day-to-day fluctuations. “This comprehensive data is not possible with solutions currently on the market. BiomeSense’s innovative tools are creating a future where microbiome tracking becomes an integral part of patients’ daily routines, vastly improving individual health insights and outcomes,” Honaker added.
“As an early investor in BiomeSense, we have always believed deeply in the company’s vision to unlock personalized nutrition via the gut microbiome,” said Andrew Bluestein, Managing Partner at Bluestein Ventures and BiomeSense board director. “The company has made immense progress since our initial investment, and we are proud to support BiomeSense as it enters this critical commercialization phase. There is a significant measurement gap in the industry and the expected benefits from BiomeSense’s technology are enormous.”
The company will leverage this funding to launch its “smart bathroom” technology, GutLab, and further expand its bioinformatics platform, including a novel solution for simple integration of disparate datasets. This first for the microbiome industry will power a significant increase in the size and statistical power of analyses performed on the platform. Supporting development of BiomeSense’s technology is Jack Gilbert, renowned microbiome research expert and BiomeSense Co-Founder.
About BiomeSense
BiomeSense is creating the first integrated precision measurement and analytics platform to transform how the human microbiome is explored, understood, and utilized to improve health. The comprehensive platform combines a novel “smart bathroom” technology (GutLab) with a cloud-based bioinformatics platform (MetaBiome). The resulting data and analytics will bring precision medicine to the microbiome, with significant potential to improve human health globally through drug development, disease identification and tracking, and consumer products.