A Chicago startup with roots at the University of Chicago just raised its first round of funding as it works to develop a better way to detect harmful bacteria in your poop.
BiomeSense announced Thursday that it raised $2 million in a seed round led by BioX Clan, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage bioscience technology. Other investors include the Seerave Foundation and SOSV, which previously gave a pre-seed investment to BiomeSense when it was in the biotech accelerator program IndieBio.
Founded in 2018, BiomeSense is developing biosensors that can detect particular kinds of bacteria in patients’ feces that could help improve the efficacy of clinical trials. The sensors, which are designed for patients to use in their home, can be particularly useful to scientists studying the microbiome because they receive dramatically more data over the course of a trial than is currently available, the startup says.
Using a toilet accessory that captures samples of their feces, patients can then send data on what’s in it to a cloud where researchers and physicians can monitor and study it.
The new financing will allow BiomeSense to complete its prototype biosensor and data modeling platform, and test their biosensors in human trials next year. The trials will investigate the impact that gut microbiomes have on cancer progression, immunotherapy response, surgical recovery and athletic performance.
BiomeSense is founded by Jack Gilbert, a professor of surgery at UChicago Medicine and the faculty director of the college’s Microbiome Center, Savas Tay, an associate professor at the Institute of Molecular Engineering, and Kevin Honaker, a recent graduate of UChicago’s Booth School of Business. Their sensors are based on research Gilbert and Tay have been working on for several years.
Last year, BiomeSense won UChicago’s Innovation Fund finals and an investment of $250,000 from the George Schultz Innovation Fund.
“The human microbiome is the next frontier of precision medicine with enormous possibilities for improving our health,” Honaker said in a statement. “Understanding how and why the microbiome changes over time is key to fully unlocking that potential, but today, getting continuous data at a reasonable cost is impossible.
