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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

allergies

Ukko Raises $40M to Fight Food Allergies and Develop its Good Gluten

Ukko, a biotech company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to develop food and therapeutics that fight food allergies, announced today that it has raised a $40 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by Leaps by Bayer (the impact investment arm of Bayer), with participation from Continental Grain Company, PeakBridge Ventures, Skyviews Life Science and Fall Line Capital. Existing investors including Khosla Ventures and TIME Ventures, the investment fund of Marc Benioff, participated as well.

This brings the total amount of funding raised by Ukko to $47.7 million dollars. According to the press announcement, the new funding will allow Tel Aviv, Israel-based Ukko to enter into clinical trials for its investigational therapeutic for peanut allergies and, more relevant for our purposes, accelerate development of the company’s proprietary gluten.

Simply speaking, Ukko uses its AI platform to analyze patient data to map how an allergen triggers a reaction in the body. With that information, Ukko breaks down the gluten protein to its component level and gets rids of the bad parts that cause allergic reactions. It keeps the good parts. Ukko then creates this new good gluten either by genetically modifying wheat plants or fermenting yeast (or some other applicable base cell) to grow it in a bioreactor.

The result, Ukko Co-Founder and CEO Anat Binur told me by phone this week, is a gluten that stretches and bakes and has all the biophysical aspects of gluten, and can be eaten by people with gluten sensitivities and celiac disease. This, in turn, means that gluten-sensitive people don’t need to sacrifice quality when enjoying different types of baked goods.

At least, that’s the plan. Binur said that some of the company’s new funds will go towards clinical trials of its gluten and getting the product through all the safety protocols and to the point of commercialization.

Once Ukko’s gluten reaches the commercialization stage, Binur said that there are a number of options for how it comes to market. Ukko could sell its own gluten, which could be added to gluten-free starches (like almonds or rice). Alternatively, the company could sell its own gluten flour as an ingredient to food companies and restaurants/bakeries, or create its own line of branded gluten-free flour to be sold on store shelves. Or Ukko could pursue some combination of all three.

By one estimate from Grand View Research, the gluten-free products market was valued at $21.61 billion in 2019, and projected to grow at a CAGR of 9.2 percent through 2027. So there is plenty of market opportunity just in gluten for Ukko.

But Ukko’s platform can be applied to any food allergy. As noted, the company is developing therapuetics for peanut allergies, but Ukko’s tech could be used for dairy allergies, soy allergies, egg allergies, etc. Creating replacement foods from the ground up that have the same nutrition and behave like the original could help alleviate a lot of sickness and save lives.

Nima Peanut Sensor Now Available, Gluten Sensor Selling at Select CVS Stores

It’s back-to-school time, which means my son is once again eating lunches in a cafeteria. I doubt his school is unique, but it actually has separate tables for kids who bring in peanut butter sandwiches. The idea being to separate, as much as possible, the kids with peanuts from the kids who are allergic to peanuts. But for kids with severe peanut allergies, there’s a new way to isolate that particular problem.

Starting today, concerned parents can purchase the Nima Peanut Sensor, which had up until now only been available for pre-order. This is the second commercial food sensor from Nima, which also makes the portable Gluten Sensor.

Unveiled in January of this year, the Nima Peanut Sensor is a two-part system consisting of a small, triangular sensor and a single-use capsule. If you want to see if packaged food or a meal at a restaurant is peanut-free, you place a pea-sized sample of it in the capsule, screw on the cap and insert it into the sensor. Results come back in under five minutes with either a peanut found message or a smiley face indicating the food is peanut-free.

Nima says its Peanut Sensor can detect 10 parts per million (ppm) of peanut protein with above 99.2 percent accuracy. (According to the company, results of third party accuracy testing can be found here, with additional validation information available here and here.)

In addition to the sensor, the other part of the Nima value proposition is the community. Through the accompanying Nima app, people can test and rate restaurant and packaged foods and share results. Users can then search the Nima community database by brand for packaged food and see a crowdsourced map of restaurants designated gluten or peanut-free.

Nima’s promised peace of mind isn’t cheap, however. The Nima Peanut Sensor, available through the Nima website and Amazon, costs $229.99, with a twelve-pack of test capsules running $72 (that drops to $59 if you do Nima’s subscription service).

Nima Co-Founder and CEO Shireen Yates told me in an interview that during this past year the company has seen that people buy the Gluten sensor for themselves, but buy the Peanut Sensor for their kids.

Elsewhere, my sharp-eyed colleague Ashley Daigneault noticed that her local CVS was selling the Nima Gluten sensor in stores. Yates confirmed with us the two have been running a small test in retail stores in Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. The Nima Gluten Sensor retails at CVS for $229 for the sensor and $72 for the capsule pack.

If this retail test works out, it will open up a bit of a different market for Nima. Instead of getting customers who are actively looking for a food sensor, it could find an audience with people who didn’t know such sensors even existed.

Though expensive, the Nima Peanut Sensor can provide an additional layer of scrutiny for concerned parents sending their kids off to school.