If you could magnify your vision a thousandfold and peer into your own gut, you’d see a teeming microcosm of bacteria, some 100 trillion tiny passengers that shape your health in ways we don’t yet fully understand. The state of an individual’s gut microbiota has been linked to everything from response to cancer drugs and the risk of mental illness to the severity of Covid-19. Developing therapies based on gut bacteria has been notoriously hard to do, however. “You need to understand the interaction of the bacteria with the host, and how does the host influence the bacteria,” says Matthias Kromayer, a managing partner with Munich-based venture fund MIG Capital. A molecular biologist by training, he was part of the team of investors that helped Covid vaccine developer BioNTech SE get its start. The earliest microbiome companies focused on single bacteria and delivered only disappointing results, Kromayer says. His latest venture is an effort to broaden the scope. MIG led a €13 million ($14 million) series A funding round in mbiomics GmbH, a German startup uses high-resolution imaging to learn more about the interplay between microbiome and host. The company uses tiny molecules that reflect fluorescent light to identify more than 100 bacteria at a time in a quicker and cheaper way. Different species of bacteria glow in different shades and intensity of color. “It’s like the cat eyes that you have at the back of your bicycle,” Kromayer says. “You can do this with millions on a slide, and you don’t have to count them. It’s the computer that counts them and does the calculation and tells you what it is.” The aim is to develop synthetic consortia of bacteria that could mimic the effect of a fecal transplant, the type of microbiome therapy that has been most successful so far, Kromayer says. The company isn’t disclosing which diseases it will target. Mbiomics aims to start testing its first therapy in patients in three years, though Kromayer says a commercial product is probably a decade away – if the technology is successful. “It reminded me of the situation 15 years ago with BioNTech,” he says. “A long-term goal, really difficult to believe in because it’s so far away, but I guess the majority of the components that you need to get there are already here.” — Naomi Kresge | 
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