Persephoneis a Y Combinator commercial stage biotechnology company dedicated to enhancing the human gut microbiome. Their initial focus is on infant gut health to support brain and immune system development, followed by products for adult health. Their technology platform uses novel computational methods and artificial intelligence with the rigor of drug development for creating evidence-based consumer products in the multi-billion dollar therapeutic pre- and probiotic markets.
Financing:
Capita3 invested in an oversubscribed $15M Series Seed round, joining investors Karl Bracken (formerly SVP at Target) of Ocampo Capital,Veronique RiethuisenofFirst Bight, Leen Kawas of Propel Bio, YCombinator, Fifty Years, Susa Ventures, American Cancer Society’s BrightEdge Fund, Pioneer Fund, ZhenFund, and over 100 individuals investing at the Company's earliest development stages.
Founders:
The company is led by co-founder and CEO, Dr. Stephanie Culler, a scientist and serial entrepreneur with a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Caltech, and co-founder and CTO Dr. Steve Van Dien with a PhD in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley.
Team:
Dr. Dick Insel is CMO and former head of J&J Pediatrics; Terrence Lim is SVP Consumer Sales (Noom, Instacart, Uber); Hiro Sato, Pedro Torres, and Sean Stromberg are leading experts in microbiology, bioinformatics, and computational biology. The team is rounded out by national biotech leaders and board members Daniel Bradbury and Paul Grint.
Market Opportunity:
The Company is a leader in the growing field of microbiome-based medicine, which is exploring how the trillions of microorganisms in our bodies influence our health and how they might be leveraged for better medical treatments. This market has many segments, with Persephone launching in the large and growing markets for infant and maternal therapeutic pre- and probiotics for specific health conditions.
Persephone Biosciences is a commercial stage biotechnology firm dedicated to enhancing the human gut microbiome, with an initial focus on infant health.
Their primary focus is on developing novel therapeutics and diagnostics by analyzing the human gut microbiome—the complex community of microorganisms living in our digestive tracts. Persephone's approach uses advanced computational methods and machine learning to better understand how the microbiome impacts health and disease.
One of their notable initiatives is the ARGONAUT study, a large-scale clinical study collecting microbiome samples from diverse populations to create a comprehensive database linking gut microbiome composition to various health outcomes, with an initial focus on cancer and associated clinical products anticipated in the future.
The company has been developing both diagnostic tools to detect diseases earlier through microbiome analysis and therapeutic approaches that target the microbiome to treat various conditions. In addition to infants and children's developmental health, their work has significant potential applications in oncology, healthy aging, women's health, and other health conditions.
