metabonose

Gut microbiota is at the intersection of food, medication and many physical & mental diseases. It’s very valuable to track it on a daily basis for long-term optimum health. However, current gut microbiota testing needs to collect & send stool sample for metagenomics or metabolomics analysis, wait for few weeks, cost hundreds of dollars and compare self-data with others in the database. Obviously, it’s not affordable, not continuous, not real-time and not personalized. Therefore, we propose a toilet wearable which can seamlessly integrate gut microbiota monitoring into human daily defecation. if all the toilets in the city no matter at home, at hotel, at office etc. are deployed our device, citizens can know their gut microbiota status anytime and anywhere. Once the microbiota is in dysbiosis, people can apply microbe-friendly nutrition to tune it back to eubiosis. As a result, individual and population-level optimum health can be achieved.

NCDs (non-communicable diseases) are the biggest crisis for worldwide healthcare system. In the world, around 50% people have at least one NCD symptom; 70% mortality is due to NCDs; 70% medical expense is used for NCDs. Healthy eating is very critical for NCDs prevention and treatment. Therefore, all kinds of personalized diet technologies are booming. However, these technologies either ignore the impact on gut microbiota, or are lack of tracking capability on gut microbiota status. as a result, optimum overall health outcomes will be compromised in the long term because gut microbiota plays tremendously role in NCDs development. 

Anyone who want to use personalized diet for disease prevention or are using personalized diet for NCDs treatment can get benefits from our solution. Through our ubiquitous gut microbiota monitoring infrastructure in the city such as home, office, school, hotel, other public places etc., our users can easily find out how their current diet are impacting gut microbiota. They will also get personalized intervention strategies to fine-tune their current diet from our user-end apps to be microbe-friendly. With good gut microbiota health, people can maximize the power of healthy eating to prevent and fight NCDs.

Our solution utilizes a smart device and user-end apps. the core of smart device is MEMS gas sensors powered by deep learning algorithm. The device will be deployed on the toilet seat to smell the odor of human poop. The poop odor contains lots of gut microbiota metabolites. By analyzing tens of key metabolites, gut microbiota eubiosis score is calculated by mathematical model. And user can check it on the user-end apps. When the score falls into unhealthy range, apps will push intervention strategies to help user to tune microbiota back to health. with our ubiquitous and daily gut microbiota management solution, people can use optimum gut microbiota to prevent and fight NCDs.

Our approach has very unique competitive advantages:

• > 400x cost down, anyone can afford!
• Continuous, real-time, non-invasive
• True personalized solution for individual longitude gut microbiota function monitoring
• Ubiquitous access, not just limited in professional labs.

The core technology is deep learning enabled MEMS gas sensor array. Our technology can reach the similar medical-grade performance with GC-MS instruments which can measure multi volatile metabolites with ppb sensitivity and stability. Meanwhile it can be miniaturized and very low cost for consumer health monitoring.  

Lots of scientific research have shown that gut microbiota is the target for NCDs prevention and treatment. Our solution enables gut microbiota performance daily tracking and modulating. It will greatly contribute to reduce the incident of NCDs. Here are some scientific evidences regarding to gut microbiota and NCDs:

• Microbiota-friendly diet alleviates type 2 diabetes
• Microbiota metabolite TMAO and cardiovascular disease
• Microbiota and chronic kidney disease
• Causal relationship between gut microbiota and metabolic disease such as obesity
• Gut microbiota and mental disease such as autism, Parkinson, dementia etc.

DOI: 10.1126/science.aao5774

DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.116.004947

http://www.clevelandheartlab.com/blog/the-gut-the-heart-and-tmao/

DOI: 10.1053/j.ajkd.2015.09.027

DOI: 10.1038/s41588-019-0350-x

DOI: 10.5056/jnm17105

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-13601-y

https://www.newsweek.com/dementia-gut-brain-conversations-treatment-prevention-1309168

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-42183-0

Currently we are still in developing phase. Not ready to serve people. In one year after our product on market, we expect the penetration rate can be 0.05% for target Chinese consumers which has 320 million according to Mckinsey survey and analysis. That is 160000 Chinese consumers. In five years, we hope to reach 5% penetration rate which is comparable with current wearables. That will be 16 million Chinese consumers.

The goal for next year: complete product development, finish some clinical trial and partner with a business employer to deploy the product and provide service.

The goal for next five years: at least reaches 5% penetration rate, build an ecosystem with government, business employers, food/nutrition suppliers and insurance companies to serve our users.

The barrier for next year is capital, we need amount of money to recruit engineer to accelerate product development. The barrier for next five years is building ecosystem to ensure rapidly scale for ubiquitous infrastructure construction

As for raising fund, we were selected as Bayer Grants4Apps top startup, and will be resident startup in Johnson & Johnson JLABS @ Shanghai. Their networks and resources will help us to approach right investors and have more chances to secure investment.

As for building ecosystem, we will explore the partnership with Bayer or Johnson & Johnson. We deploy the device in their office toilets. The gut microbiota management service will be well-being for their employees. Once the employees are satisfied with our product. Then we can deploy in their home to reach their families. Meanwhile, we can also approach the vendors for Bayer and Johnson & Johnson such as travel agencies, contract hotels, insurance companies etc. as a result, we can map out step by step to complete our hardware infrastructure. Once food/nutrition companies, insurance companies and other stake holders in the ecosystem see this infrastructure, they will be attracted by the tremendous value, then with their products/services, we can better serve consumers. A positive feedback loop will be formed till to make a true ubiquitous gut microbiota management platform.

2 full-time, 2 part-time, 3 contractors

our solution needs cross-disciplined talents including gas sensor, machine learning, gut microbiota know-how. our team have all:

CEO has +15 years semicon, nano gas sensor tech & BD experience. good at cross-disciplined innovation. used to be Director of China operations at AerNos and different technical role at Dow Chemical, ASML, SMIC, has Bachelor degree in chemical engineering from Zhejiang university.

CTO has +13 years embeded system design and machine learning algorithm experience. used to lead clinical AI decision making system development work in a public listed medical software company, worked for NEC in Japan and China for 8 years on embeded system design & mobile computing. has Master degree in Computer science from Zhejiang university.

our Scientific advisor has +15 years biology scientific research experience. she is senior scientific research at Genentech, and also worked as project scientist at Lowrance Berkeley Lab and Associate specialist at UC Berkeley. she is author and co-author for tens of papers in well-known journal including nature, science etc. has rich experiences in microbes, biochemistry, bioinformatics etc.

we are partnering with Johnson & Johnson JLABS. we will complete product development in JLABS. and JLABS will provide us the connection to  Johnson & Johnson business units for partnering future possible clinical trial & solution deployment.

we will use 2G2C, 2B2C and 2C model to provide free device and deploy at home, at office, at hotel, at school and at other public places. consumers only need to pay $35 annual membership fee (they can pay by themselves, or paid by employers), then they can use the deployed ubiquitous infrastructure and enjoy our gut microbiota management service. meanwhile consumers can also enjoy discounted products/services from food/nutrition companies, insurance companies in our ecosystem based on consumers' performance on gut microbiota management.

in the first stage, we have to raise money to support our product development and acquire seed users to demonstrate that our solution is workable. then we will negotiate with business employers to deploy devices and reach their employees. employers have to pay their employees' membership fee upfront, therefore we can cover the hardware cost and deployment related cost. with more employers join in, we can easily cover the infrastructure expansion cost and reach more end users to ensure future income on the membership fee. this is a positive feedback loop to keep generating profit to sustain our business and services. 

metabonose is dedicating to build an ubiquitous gut microbiota daily management infrastructure to help the whole population to achieve optimal health. with this mission, we have to conquer 3 milestones ASAP:

1st milestone: product development. the most efforts will be in sensor algorithm optimization. through MIT SOLVE exposure, we can more easily attract like-minded algorithm talents to join in us to accelerate product development.

2nd milestone: pilot deployment. besides Johnson & Johnson JLABS which is our partner, the members in MIT SOLVE community are our ideal pilot partners as well. thus we can collect more diverse feedback to improve the product.

3rd milestone: mass deployment. if we want to turn a city into our ubiquitous infrastructure, firstly we have to find some anchor nodes from public area, commercial area, office area & living community area, after completing these anchor nodes, then we step by step fill up the rest nodes in the city map. in order to succeed in this milestone, we must have good product design and user experience design to serve these different use cases. MIT has good resources to help us such as SOLVE team or MIT media lab etc. meanwhile, business partners, NGO, government etc. in MIT SOLVE community are our ideal anchor node deployment partners. with their participation, once metabonose turns the city into ubiquitous gut microbiota daily management infrastructure, the impact power will emerge to make city healthier.

we need very diverse partners in our ecosystem including:

employer which encourage employee for healthy eating;

commercial places: such as hotels, shopping malls etc.;

food/nutrition company;

government: strive for improving population level health

insurance companies: looking for technology to encourage consumer to take healthy lifestyle

the AI algorithm is the core behind our technology. if we get the prize, we will use the prize to continue developing more advanced algorithm to furtherly strengthen our product's precision and reliability. meanwhile, we will explore more applications for human health, sustainable agriculture etc. 

we will use the grants for our mission: build ubiquitous gut microbiota daily management infrastructure. the capital will be mainly spent on talent salary and marketing fee.