A probiotic cultivation experiment in a laboratory.
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Seed Health has been in the business of scientific advances in microbiomes since its founding in 2015, but its biggest success to date may have been becoming profitable as a bioscience startup. The popularity of the company's original product, DS-01, a daily probiotic and prebiotic supplement and its pediatric equivalent, sold directly to consumers in a 30-day supply of sleek green packaging through a subscription model, now allows The company invests in cutting-edge science related to probiotics and human and environmental health.
“We are one of the few biotech companies that can say they are profitable, and one of the amazing things about profitability is that you can reinvest in future innovation and cutting-edge science,” said Ara Katz, co-founder of Seed Health and who was included in the inaugural CNBC Changemakers list earlier this year.
On Thursday, Seed Health launched CODA, a computational biology platform funded by the profitability of its consumer business. “I have always thought about building a sustainable business model that allows us to continue cutting-edge science,” Katz said.
The company's SeedLabs division also works on environmental applications for bacteria and microbiomes, such as probiotics for corals and bees, bacteria to break down plastic, and the use of volcanic bacteria in carbon capture.
Offering subscriptions to consumer products in increments of one, three or six months has helped the company be in a position to bet on riskier scientific discoveries.
Katz said one of the benefits of the company's revenue-generating subscription model is greater flexibility and understanding in financial decision-making, “and really making sure that we can make these long-term investments. For us, the hotline is always thinking about the border”. science whose translation we can accelerate into real-world impact,” he added.
Seed Health co-founders and co-CEOs Ara Katz and Raja Dhir.
Seed health
At its core, CODA is a computational tool that uses artificial intelligence to process massive amounts of phenotypic and genomic data from the Human Phenotype Project, a massive collection of human data points spanning decades.
Advised by top researchers, including Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute of Science and Eric Topol of the Scripps Research Institute, the Human Phenotype Project has a global sample of more than 11,000 participants (and a goal of reaching 100,000 participants) cataloged annually for 25 years that includes multiple biological measures, from the genome, proteome, transcriptome to the microbiome.
Katz co-founder and co-CEO at Seed Health, Raja Dhir, said CODA and its accompanying data set will help standardize microbiome scientific methods, which has long been an issue in the field. Previous studies have reached conclusions based on smaller sample sizes, using sampling, analytical and storage methods that are not standardized across the industry.
“What is healthy control? You can't just take a random person and assume they're healthy or not. But when you have 10,000 people and you have all this data on them…let's contrast our least healthy people with our most healthy people. healthy and develop many more tools,” said Dhir, who oversees Seed Health's environmental research and has experience translating scientific research into product innovation.
As an example, Dhir pointed to a study of 500 people that might draw the conclusion that the presence of a certain bacteria predicts, for example, weight gain, but another study of 500 different people conducted by a different organization or institution might draw a conclusion. completely different conclusion. conclusion. According to Dhir, CODA's large sample size and numerous data points offer the potential for standardization that has not been previously achieved.
“We saw that the whole probiotics field, and certainly a lot of the obsession with gut health, didn't really reflect the scientific approach that we really thought, that we really wanted to take and pioneer,” Katz added.
Independent experts in the field agree that the science needs to improve. “I see a lot of probiotics out there, everyone is jumping on the probiotic bandwagon, like probiotic drinks, probiotic foods, and I'm like, really? Does it really work? And that, for me, as a scientist, and someone who wants to get better health is frustrating, so I think it's going to be really important to increase the scientific rigor, the testing and the conduct of these clinical trials,” said Dr. Arpana Gupta, an associate professor at UCLA and co-director of UCLA. the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center. “There's definitely promise.”
The first applications of CODA are in metabolic health, brain health, longevity and menopause, research areas chosen because they have already been identified as areas of human health where early CODA data showed the strongest evidence.
“Taking those findings [from CODA], and eventually translate them and bring them to billions of people who could benefit from that, I think that would be the biggest contribution and that excites me, because then, without CODA, all of these findings would end up in, perhaps, something very good. papers, but only papers. And this way they can eventually translate to people,” said Segal, who has studied metabolic health and the link between the microbiome and body composition.
Segal said the Human Phenotype project has included the collection of dietary records and medical histories, as well as glucose monitoring records and DEXA (bone densitometry) scans, much of which spans more than two decades and offers insights into the human microbiome. changing and aging. .
“It's a tremendous step forward not only in the standardization of data, but also in different types of data. That's why it's called deep phenotyping, because phenotyping means that all of these things come together to create a person's phenotype,” he said. Dhir. “That's what CODA unlocks… There are things that were previously simply drowned in noise, in the noise of bioinformatics data, that are now coming to light in such clear signals.”
Seed Health has been working on several efforts around pioneering microbiome science for human and planetary health.
Many in the field believe the approach is intended to have broader applications.
“I think the big areas right now are cancer,” said Dr. Joseph Petrosino, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine and director of the Metagenomics and Microbiome Research Center, and a member of Seed's scientific advisory board. Health. “The ability to use the microbiome as a diagnostic and therapeutic potential to help with responses to various cancer treatments, as well as to avoid some of the side effects of those treatments,” Petrosino said.
Seed Health says it has no current plans to use CODA for cancer-related research.
