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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

microbiome

Report: How Microbiome and DNA-based Personalized Nutrition Will Change the Way We Eat (Spoon Plus)

The “first wave” of personalized nutrition is already here. These are companies that use data from wearable devices to track consumers’ weight, exercise quantities, temperature and other factors that can shape food and beverage suggestions.

The next step, or “second wave,” on the evolutionary path of personalized nutrition will get even more granular in terms of the information about each individual that services can pull and analyze. Instead of drawing on data from wearables, third-party companies will use information gathered from inside individual bodies, either from gut microbes or DNA sequences. Using this data, companies will be able to create truly personalized diet plans driven by lab results and deep analysis, instead of the more generalized metrics that are available through wearables. These second-wave services can create meal journeys that are absolutely unique to each individual based not on of general trends or self-reported data but actual biology.

This report will examine the biomarker-driven, personalized nutrition landscape. It will examine key drivers, market players, opportunities and challenges, and make forward-looking predictions about what this market will look like over the next 12 months, 5 years and 10 years.

Companies profiled in this report include Viome, Sun Genomics, Genopalate, DNANudge, DayTwo and Nylos.

This research report is exclusive for Spoon Plus members. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here.

Viome’s CTO on why Gut Microbes plus AI can Reveal Perfect Diet

For all of us trying to eat healthier — especially those who are battling a chronic disease — figuring out exactly how certain foods will affect your body is critical. That’s what Viome is trying to help people determine. The startup examines your microbiome to create personalized dining recommendations (and recipes) featuring foods that are an ideal fit for your biology.

We’re pretty fascinated by the whole concept of microbiome-based eating, so invited Guru Banavar, the CTO of Viome, to speak at The Spoon’s Customize event in New York on February 27. If you want to join us (you should!) there are only a few tickets left, so get on it! (Use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off.)

To give you a taste of what’s to come, we asked Banavar a few questions about microbiome-driven eating, his time learning about AI with IBM Watson, and the biggest challenges for selling personal nutrition.

This interview has been edited for grammar and clarity,

Tell us a little bit about what Viome does.
Viome is on a mission to help people take control of their health and ultimately prevent and reverse chronic disease. We do this by understanding people’s biology on a molecular level, especially in their gut microbiome, using our proprietary metatranscriptomics technology combined with powerful AI-driven analysis to deliver them personalized insights and recommendations.

What’s the difference between personalized nutrition based on your microbiome (gut bacteria), and personalized nutrition based on your DNA?
Our microbial genome is between 2 to 20 million microbial genes, making our genetic material 99% microbial. This means that to fully understand the human body we must start by collecting data and analyzing the gut microbiome – the richest source of our microbes.  

Therefore, the first difference is that DNA tests only look at DNA (your genes), which never change throughout your life — even if you develop a chronic disease. We at Viome look at RNA (gene expression, or what your genes are actually doing within your body) which is dynamic and changes all the time. It’s a better indicator of overall wellness and chronic disease. Since any two humans share [more than] 99 percent the same DNA, but only about 5 percent of the same microbial DNA,  each person’s microbiome is incredibly unique — what works for you may not work for me.

In the past you’ve worked for a long time at IBM Watson. How do you think your AI experience has helped in the personalized nutrition field?
I was involved in solving a wide variety of problems from different industries at IBM Watson, so I quickly learned that AI is not one thing but really a toolbox of many techniques that you need to put together depending on the problem you’re solving.  Personalized nutrition based on molecular data is a very challenging field, and I brought my experience with the full range of AI tools & techniques to get the fastest and the most effective solution.

Viome currently recommends diets and recipes. Do you see it ever working in tandem with foodservice or grocery?
We already see many of our customers reporting that they use their Viome app in the grocery store, when they are choosing foods and supplements online or when they are selecting from restaurant menus. As we build new services within our app we are looking to make this frictionless, and we are in early stage discussions with a number of large grocery retailers and international food companies…. watch this space!

What do you think is the biggest challenge for personalized nutrition?
We have actually found that once people understand the technology, take the test, they see amazing results, so our job is less about acceptance and more about awareness and inspiration.

The science around personalized nutrition is advancing rapidly with multiple new papers published every day, especially connecting the microbiome and chronic diseases like Diabetes, Obesity, IBS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimers and Cancer. Our world class science team is working with partners like the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser, United Healthcare and GSK, among others, to not only keep on top of the science but advance it through clinical studies and trials. Not all companies who give personalized nutrition recommendations with the same depth of scientific rigor and understanding, so education is important.

Banavar will be speaking about microbiome-driven personalized nutrition along with the CEO of Sun Genomics at Customize! Don’t miss out — use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off your ticket now, before they’re gone.

Viome Raised $25M for its Microbiome-based Dietary Guide Platform

Speaking with Viome CEO, Naveen Jain, it’s not hard to understand how investors, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff and Khosla Ventures among them, handed Viome a fresh round of $25 million in funding last week.

During our chat by phone, Jain was animated, proclaiming that it was a big week for him not because his company has now raised $45.5 million (and wants to raise $100 million in this Series B round) but because life is, in his words, “amazing!” and his company was working to make becoming sick a choice.

The company does this by collecting a stool sample from you (which you mail in) and running it through its software platform to analyze what microbes in your gut are doing to the food you eat. How your microbiome is treating your food can indicate what diseases you might be susceptible to, according to Jain. From there Viome applies AI to its findings to develop individualized dietary guidelines. Viome says there is no universal diet. Spinach, for example, might not be healthy for everyone because of the way your body processes it. By doing all this, Jain and company claim, Viome can help people avoid getting diseases like diabetes, or irritable bowel syndrome or even insomnia and depression.

The company’s claims and services aren’t without skeptics, even Jain himself has a controversial past. But that evidently didn’t keep investors at bay, and Jain says that Viome has a dozen clinical trials with various universities, labs and hospital networks to show the efficacy of his company’s service.

Viome has been on a bit of a roll this year. Back in February, the company acquired personalized nutrition service, Habit, from Campbell’s (terms were not disclosed). Habit’s original business was creating personalized recipes based on a person’s biomarkers. These types of personalized recipes, according to Jain, were a natural fit for Viome. In addition to recommending specific foods based on the biome, the company could recommend whole meals. Though Jain didn’t bring it up, it’s not hard to see Viome taking it one step further in selling personalized meal kits to people at some point.

But first, Jain said the biggest challenge for his company is generating awareness. He said the new money will go towards acquiring new customers, which will in turn provide more data that will make its service more useful. Additionally, Jain said Viome is working on a new type of test that only requires a finger prick of blood. This, by an unfortunate bit of timing, sounds a lot like Theranos.

Applying technology to your microbiome is definitely a trend. Other players in the space include uBiome, Day Two and Second Genome. Whether or not all of these solutions actually work and are something to get as excited as Jain about, remains to be seen.