Microbiome Report for Week Ending 1/19/19

Seres Therapeutics Announces Chief Executive Officer Transition
Seres Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: MCRB) announced on 1/15/19 the appointment of Eric D. Shaff as President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Shaff, who is currently Chief Operating and Financial Officer, succeeds Roger J. Pomerantz, M.D. Mr. Shaff has also joined Seres’ Board of Directors and will continue to serve as Seres’ principal financial officer on an interim basis. Dr. Pomerantz will continue as Chairman of Seres’ Board of Directors.
 
Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., Lead Director and Co-Founder of Seres Therapeutics and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, commented, “Eric is an experienced business leader with exceptional strategic and operational acumen, and the Board has great confidence in his ability to successfully lead Seres. We are pleased to continue to work with Roger as he returns to his original role as Board Chair. We thank him for his important contributions to the development and growth of Seres since it spun out from Flagship Pioneering in 2014 and look forward to our additional collaborations.”

Science Translational Medicine Publishes First-in-Human Clinical Data for SYNB1020 as a Potential Treatment for Hyperammonemia
Synlogic, Inc., (Nasdaq: SYBX) a clinical stage company applying synthetic biology to beneficial microbes to develop novel, living medicines, announced on 1/16/19 the publication in Science Translational Medicine  of clinical data from its Phase 1 clinical study in healthy volunteers and supporting preclinical data from its investigational Synthetic Biotic candidate, SYNB1020. The data support the continued development of SYNB1020 which is currently being evaluated in a Phase 1b/2a clinical trial in patients with cirrhosis and elevated blood ammonia.

“These data demonstrate that we can engineer bacteria to carry out a specific function, deliver them to humans and that they perform as designed,” said Paul Miller, Ph.D., Synlogic’s chief scientific officer. “Ongoing manufacturing and formulation development work at Synlogic gives us confidence we will be able to scale and formulate our Synthetic biotic medicines to meet multiple needs in the marketplace for living medicines. The compelling data in this publication encouraged us to advance SYNB1020 into additional clinical studies and we look forward to presenting data from our trial, designed to evaluate the potential of SYNB1020 to lower ammonia in patients with cirrhosis, in mid-2019.”

Long-standing evidence supports the importance of the gastro-intestinal (GI) tract as the major source of ammonia in the systemic circulation. The current standard-of-care for conditions that result in hyperammonemia, including hepatic encephalopathy stemming from liver damage and urea cycle disorders (UCDs), which are genetic diseases, employ orally administered approaches such as antibiotics, laxatives and ammonia scavengers. However, each of these agents has limitations resulting in a need for additional therapies to manage hyperammonemia.

Kaleido Files For $100 Million IPO
On 1/16/19 Kaleido submitted and S-1 regulatory filing https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1751299/000119312519007301/d6242... with the goal of raising $100 million.
The company is creating Microbiome Metabolic Therapies (MMTs) that 'are designed to modulate the metabolic output and profile of the microbiome by driving the function and distribution of the organ's existing microbes. The company currently has six products in early stages of development.

Gut Bacteria Could Combat Obesity and Depression https://labiotech.eu/medical/microbiome-obesity-depression/
This article on labiotech.eu dscusses a five year microbiome project funded by the EU that has discovered specific strains of gut bacteria that protect against obesity, glucose intolerance, and depression.