€7m for French microbiome start-up

Nextbiotix will use the money to bring its lead candidate into the clinic. The French start-up develops microbiome-based therapies using single microbial strains that interact with human cells in the gut. They are intended to treat patients suffering from inflammatory bowel diseases. These diseases affect approximately 1.5 million Americans, 2.2 million Europeans, and several hundreds of thousands more worldwide.

Gut microbiome imbalances are known to play a major role in these diseases. Nextbiotix aims to bring gut microbiota back into the therapeutic equation using a bacterium called Faecalibacterium prausnitzii. The company was founded two years ago by the researchers that led the discoveries of this naturally-occurring bacteria, which has been shown to be predictive of good health in the human gut microbiota.