Ann: Global Leader IFF and Microba Reach First Milestone, page-2

Good to see Microba mixing with some big boppers. The youtube clip I referred to in a previous post made the point that there was a lot of enthusiasm for microbiome therapeutics a few years back but interest has cooled since a couple of clinical studies bombed (in 2019 / 2020). It seems that IFF is one player who has not totally given up on the concept.

Changing topics a bit, in that clip the claim was that going forward the interest will be in metabolites that are made by microbes rather than microbes themselves. The point was that there is far too much variability in the microbes that make up each of our microbiomes so it was necessary to look at something with more uniformity, hence the focus on the metabolites rather than the microbes.

Over the weekend I listened to this podcast: DR. WILL BULSIEWICZ ON THE MICROBIOME: Heal Your Gut, Sidestep Disease & Thrive | Rich Roll Podcast (you will need to youtube that title as I cannot get the links to work).

Young Will apparently was an enterologist who has moved into running an outfit something like Microba. He made a point that it is a mistake to look for a one thing fixes everyone. He gave the example where a diet might cause on average a 5 kg loss, but included in that figure there will be some on exactly the same diet who lose 10 kg and some who gain 5 kg. He said the secret is that the solution might have to be customised for each person at each point in time. It reminds me of anti money laundering compliance where it used to be that the financial entity had to know each customer but now the standard is moving towards knowing each transaction: it is becoming unacceptable to assume that every transaction carries the same risk.

It may be that companies like Microba need not know exactly the composition of a person's microbiome but rather what instructions in the form of metabolites is the microbiome giving to the human body for each transaction. If so then that is a problem for investors in these companies as it means that the solution may not be scalable.