BiomX: Innovation in Microbiome Therapeutics

Background

Company: BiomX

Collaboration with the Israel Innovation Authority
With financing and entrepreneurial guidance from the Israeli Innovation Authority’s Incubator Incentive Program, BiomX secured $24 million in a Series A financing. The round was led by OrbiMed, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. and Takeda Ventures, Inc. with participation from Seventure Partners, MiraeAsset, SBI Japan-Israel Innovation Fund and other European investors.

Who is BiomX?
BiomX discovers and develops innovative microbiome-based therapeutics to prevent and treat cancer, IBD, and skin disorders that stem from microbiome dysbiosis. BiomX offers a complete end-to-end solution from target discovery to development of therapeutic compounds, with flexible capabilities to precisely modulate the microbiome and restore microbial balance through adding or eradicating bacteria with both native and synthetically altered phages.
 
BiomX’s microbiome modulation technologies are based on the cutting-edge innovative research of its scientific collaborators: Professor Rotem Sorek, PhD and Dr. Eran Elinav, MD, PhD both of the Weizmann Institute of Science and Professor Timothy K. Lu, MD, PhD of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
BiomX Ltd was founded in 2015 and is based in Ness Ziona, Israel.

Successful Innovation

The Challenge
The composition of bacteria forming the microbiome, mainly gut bacteria, has been linked to various health conditions, from acne and allergies, to gastrointestinal ailments, obesity and cancer. While the multitude of biological processes that are affected by the microbiome make the bacteria in the human microbiome critical to human health,  the microbiome’s diversity has traditionally presented a great challenge for identifying specific targets and developing new medicines to treat imbalance of the microbiome. Therefore, existing therapeutic approaches for modulating microbiomes in the clinic have remained relatively primitive and ineffective.

The Innovation
BiomX’s innovative, proprietary platform for target discovery enables the identification of specific bacteria and molecules that drive or alleviate dysbiosis of the microbiome.  The approach simultaneously measures the RNA expression of hundreds of microbiome species in a single experiment. The transcriptome of each microbiome bacteria is reconstructed to the single-base resolution using a combination of proprietary experimental protocols and a proprietary computational platform, allowing accurate identification of the specific genes and pathways that drive the dynamic response of the microbiome in real time to a given molecule or stimulus. BiomX’s treatments are developed using phages — special viruses intended to fight certain bacteria, as opposed to traditional antibiotics that kill all bacteria, including beneficial bacteria.

Global Impact
BiomX is currently advancing the company’s novel therapeutic pipeline towards clinical stages, leading to the commercialization of its microbiome modulation platform technologies that selectively eliminate specific bacteria, and thus replacing the need for conventional antibiotics.