Viome Life Sciences, a digital health company leveraging precision nutrition to increase health and longevity, recently announced additional funding toward its series C financing round. Over $67 million in funding was raised, which was led by Bold Capital Group. The new funds bring Viome's total funding to more than $150 million.
"As long-standing supporters of Viome, we have always believed deeply in Viome's mission to identify the root causes of chronic disease by honoring each person's biochemical individuality," said Teymour Boutros-Ghali, Managing Partner at BOLD Capital Partners. "They have made tremendous strides since our initial investment, and we are proud to support Viome in its mission to provide democratized access to personalized, precision nutrition."
On a roll
The company said the new financing will support the continuous development of Viome's product pipeline, including the Oral Health Intelligence Test, early detection diagnostic tests for chronic diseases, cancers, and more. In July, Viome debuted its new at-home test that leverages gene expression analysis in the gut microbiome, oral microbiome, and cells. These markers are proven to be crucial to understanding an individual’s health and addressing the root causes of disease and aging. And then in August, Viome unveiled an at-home saliva test that can detect biomarkers associated with oral cancer and throat cancer with 95% specificity and 90% sensitivity rates.
“The results of our technology’s capabilities are reshaping our understanding of human biology and modern medicine,” said Naveen Jain, Viome’s founder & CEO.
Personalization
Jain said since its inception in 2016, Viome has been at the forefront of the global healthcare paradigm shift toward personalized and precision nutrition.
"With our unique approach and unparalleled insight into the human microbiome and its interaction with the human host, we have helped nearly half a million individuals better understand how to take control of their health and address many underlying causes of inflammation and microbial imbalance, both of which science continues to strongly link to the onset of chronic disease. With such an obvious gap between the healthcare market and the ability to make breakthrough test solutions, such as CancerDetect, available faster to save more lives, we are thankful to our investors, who support us in each critical milestone towards our mission to help individuals live a longer, healthier life,” said Jain.
In addition to Bold Capital Group, all of Viome's existing investors participated in the latest round. Khosla Ventures, West River Group, Glico, Ocgrow Ventures, and Physician Partners all returned to demonstrate their continued confidence in and commitment to Viome's rapid growth.
The capital raised will bolster Viome's expanded clinical research targeting aggressive cancers and chronic diseases, and the continuation of clinically-validated early-stage diagnostics and therapeutics.
More to come
In the coming months, Viome plans to leverage this funding to debut a suite of new wellness and diagnostic tests specifically targeting the oral microbiome, which in recent years, has become equal in importance to the gut microbiome in terms of its connection to systemic diseases. Building upon the success of its CancerDetect for oral and throat cancer, Viome is also utilizing this same technology to power early detection for additional hard-to-detect cancers and GI disorders such as IBD.
