DayTwo, an Israeli company that analyzes gut microbiomes to assist with nutrition and glycemic control, has raised $31 million in Series B financing. Ofek Ventures and aMoon led the round, with additional support coming from prior backers Seventure Partners and Johnson & Johnson.
With this, the company brings its total backing to $48 million.
WHAT THEY DO
DayTwo’s platform asks patients to send a sample of their gut microbiome to the company’s lab, where it is sequenced and characterized alongside blood test results and a user questionnaire. These results are delivered back to the patient as a full report of their gut health, and read by a machine learning algorithm that, through an app, provides the patient with meal scores as well as prediction of how certain food will affect them. This approach allows users to conveniently monitor how their food intake is affecting their nutrition or, although the company stresses that it is not providing medical advice and that any major dietary changes should be cleared with a clinician when necessary.
“DayTwo is the only evidence-based, actionable, microbiome platform in the market today. We are in a privileged position to leverage our experience including first-rate science; clinical trials in Israel and the US, tens of thousands of customers; and provider, employer and payer relationships,” Lihi Segal, CEO and founder of DayTwo, said in a statement. “This deep and broad foundation, coupled with this financing, enables DayTwo to address the large and pressing clinical need to bring food-as-medicine to market for people with Type 2 diabetes in the US.”
According to the funding announcement, DayTwo staff has grown to 75 employees in Tel Aviv and the San Francisco Bay Area since its founding in 2015. It has a handful of ongoing research projects with providers, pharmas and diabetes groups, and ended the first quarter of 2019 with “tens of thousands of individual customers, and hundreds of providers in the DayTwo clinician network.”
WHAT IT’S FOR
The company wrote that its new funding will fuel its push into the US market, where it will be seeking partnerships with payers, providers and large employers. In addition, DayTwo will be targeting new products and services focused on metabolic and gastrointestinal conditions.
THE LARGER TREND
DayTwo’s previous round brought in $12 million for the microbiome analysis company, and launched a strategic partnership with Israeli HMO Clalit Health Services last August.
Broader interest in the microbiome has steadily grown in the past decade or so, with an ever-increasing number of studies and clinical evaluations exploring the impacts bacterial colonies in the gut and elsewhere may have on an individual’s health. However, consumer-focused microbiome companies have been something of a mixed bag, ranging from funding rounds for microbiome test kit companies to recent FBI raids on industry leader uBiome.
ON THE RECORD
"We are undergoing a transformational change in healthcare, when technology and machine learning can benefit patients with diabetes," Yahal Zilka, managing partner at Ofek Ventures, said in a statement. "After success in its initial market, we are excited to bring DayTwo to the US where it has the potential to improve the lives of over 100 million people with diabetes and pre-diabetes,”
