A San Francisco-based firm developing therapies around the microbiome has raised a new round of venture capital funding and appointed a prominent industry executive to its board of directors.
The company, uBiome, said Thursday tha tit had raised $83 million in a Series C financing round, led by OS Fund and with participation from 8VC, Y Combinator, Dentsu Ventures and others. In addition, it said it appointed for Joe Jimenez, former CEO of Swiss drugmaker Novartis, to its board.
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The firm is tapping into a market that, according to a forecast released the same day as uBiome’s announcement, will see significant growth in the coming years. The report, by Zion Market Research, forecast that the human microbiome market will grow from the $721.6 million at which it was valued in 2017 to more than $1.36 billion by the end of 2024, assuming a 9.4 percent annual growth rate. The report noted that transplant of fecal microbiota acted as a starting point for companies to venture into microbiome-based therapeutics.
The firm said it would use the money to expand its human microbiome database, which it describes as the world’s largest, and advance its product portfolio, including drug discovery and development. Its existing doctor-ordered products include SmartGut, a stool test that identifies gut microbes for patients with conditions like inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. SmartJane, for women, looks for genotypes of all 19 clinically relevant strains of human papillomavirus, identifies four common sexually transmitted infections – namely chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and mycoplasma genitalium – and surveys more than 20 microbes associaed with bacterial vaginosis and other conditions.
Jimenez served as Novartis’ CEO from 2010 until Jan. 31 of this year, having previously served as division head of the company’s consumer health and pharmaceutical divisions between 2007 and 2010. Vas Narasimhan is the company’s current CEO. Jimenez became the subject of controversy when it was revealed that under his watch, Novartis hired Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former attorney, for $1.2 million to provide consulting on how the Trump administration would approach health policy. Jimenez was a co-signatory on the contract with company attorney Felix Erhat, who retired from the company amid the controversy. While it was initially reported that the company had made monthly payments of $100,000 between February 2017 and January 2018, a report by Senate Democrats alleged that the deal was more extensive than previously reported, though Novartis disputed its conclusions.