Seed financing in hand, VastBiome mines the genes of gut microbes

The founders of VastBiome have parlayed a Texas Medical Center Biodesign fellowship into support from the Illumina Accelerator, and now a $4.5 million seed round co-led by Merck Global Health Innovation Fund. Launched in Houston in 2018 and now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the company uses machine learning to mine the genes of gut microbes for immuno-oncology therapies and biomarkers.

Co-founder and CEO Kareem Barghouti said the seed round, which was co-led by Viking Global and Timewise Investment, will allow VastBiome to build its team, fine-tune its computational platform to improve the quality of predictions and expand its access to patient data and biospecimen samples...