Microbiotica Wins Young Company of the Year at Business Weekly Awards

Cambridge, UK, 18 September 2020 – Microbiotica, a leading player in microbiome-based therapeutics and biomarkers, has been named Business Weekly Young Company of the Year 2020.

The “Young Company of the Year” category is awarded to the most exciting recently incorporated enterprise in any sector that has made significant progress in the last 12 months. Microbiotica has been recognised for its continued development in using human data to drive new therapeutic strategies in the microbiome to fulfil its potential as a new class of medicine.

Microbiotica has addressed the challenges of taking microbiome therapeutics into a rational, data-driven era. Its platform, evolved from technology developed over more than a decade at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, comprises the world’s leading microbiome Culture Collection and Reference Genome Database, advanced Microbiome Bioinformatics and Machine Learning technology, and an unprecedented capability to isolate all the gut bacteria from any one human. The Company is able to use these tools to comprehensively analyse large clinical datasets, discern specific bacteria associated with patient phenotypes, and identify candidates for therapeutics or biomarkers to manage drug treatment.

Earlier this year, the Company signed a collaboration agreement with Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) to develop microbiome co-therapeutics and biomarkers for cancer patients receiving checkpoint inhibitor therapy. This collaboration represents further progress by the Company into the immuno-oncology field, having discovered a key predictive biomarker and therapeutic with an established preclinical proof-of-concept.

This collaboration is a further validation of the Company’s technology following a major collaboration with Genentech/Roche in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), and one with University of Adelaide to develop novel bacterial therapy for Ulcerative Colitis (UC). The therapeutic in UC has also made significant progress in the past 12 months, with key preclinical proof-of-concept established.

Dr Mike Romanos, CEO of Microbiotica, said of the win: “This year has been significant for Microbiotica; and Dr Trevor Lawley (co-founder and CSO) and I are proud that the company has been recognised for the milestones it has achieved over the past year. Winning this award is a testament to the entire team here, as well as the quality of our ongoing programmes and collaborations. I believe that we have built a world-leading platform that best positions us to explore the microbiome as a new class of medicine in a wide range of diseases, with much further progress in the coming years”