Seed Health and Anavo Therapeutics Launch

 

New Series A financing rounds have been announced in the last two days, with Seed Health leading the pack. The microbial sciences company announced it had closed a $40 million Series A financing round yesterday, which the company says will support upcoming category launches, clinical trials, digital health programs, microbial stabilization technologies, and expansion into international markets.

Seed’s Series A financing round was led by impact investor The Craftory, in conjunction with TechBio investor ARTIS Ventures and GISEV and existing investors Founders Fund and 8VC.

“Advances in research reveal the vast potential of microbes to transform how we live and care for ourselves, our children, and our environment,” said Ara Katz, Seed’s Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer (CEO). “We are inspired to steward this next generation of probiotics and microbiome-based innovations that will disrupt and forever change the global categories of health, hygiene, diet and self-care.”

Seed had developed several microbial applications prior to the Series A launch, including next-generation probiotic applications and live biotherapeutics across therapeutic areas such as gastroenterology, nutrition, oral hygiene, pediatrics, dermatology, and women’s health.

“We are converging advances in sequencing technologies, metabolomics, and functional strain characterization to gain insight into microbial communities and develop interventions that are effective across a heterogeneous population or personalized,” according to a statement made by Seed’s other Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Raja Dhir. “These proceeds accelerate our multi-platform, multi-technology approach to efficiently take breakthrough research from discovery to market across ecosystems of the body at various life stages, developmental windows, and health conditions.”

Seed’s flagship 24-strain, broad-spectrum probiotic product, DS-01™, previously received investigational new drug authorization for a Phase II trial in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. Researchers lead the randomized, triple-blind, and placebo-controlled clinical trial from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. 

The probiotic, which includes 24 genetically distinct microorganisms from 12 different species, is also under investigation. An additional four clinical studies focused on constipation, post-alcohol gut microbiota restoration, urolithin production and post-antibiotic treatment recovery.

“We are incredibly impressed with Seed Health’s decentralized model in microbiome, which enables them to efficiently advance breakthrough research from discovery to development, validation, clinical research, and scale up,” said Stuart Peterson, from Series A funder ARTIS Ventures’ Managing Partner. “Their combination of scientific rigor, human-centered design and omni-channel expertise, uniquely positions them in the fast-growing global field of probiotics and live biotherapeutics.”

Anavo Therapeutics also announced today seed financing totaling €20 million ($24 million). The Dutch company’s debut is mainly due to financing from M Ventures and INKEF Capital, in conjunction with Taiho Ventures and Bioqube Ventures. 

According to Anavo, the seed financing will advance the company’s proprietary cancer drug discovery portfolio for lying on expertise in human phosphatase biology and deep drug discovery. 

“Anavo was founded to unlock the full potential of phosphatase-targeting allosteric modulators and has attracted one of the largest European biotech seed rounds to date,” said Anavo’s CEO Dr. Birgit Zech. “Recent progress especially around SHP2 has demonstrated that the time is ripe to address phosphatase drug discovery more systematically and on a much larger scale.” 

“The progress that has been made with SHP2 in our industry has revived the phosphatase sector but is only scratching the surface of this largely untapped attractive molecular target class,” added Simone Botti, Junior Partner at INKEF Capital. “We are very pleased to support Anavo, a company poised to deliver first-in-class therapeutics in oncology and establish itself as a world leader in phosphatase drug discovery.”