US-based biotechnology startup Kallyope launched on Thursday with $44m of series A funding, supplied by investors including gene editing company Illumina.
Other investors in Kallyope include Lux Capital, Polaris Partners, The Column Group, Alexandria Venture Investments and Tony Evnin.
The company plans to combine sequencing, genetics, circuit mapping, neural imaging and bioinformatics technology to research how the gut communicates with the brain and other organs to affect a person’s physiological, metabolic and internal state.
The research will be used to develop therapeutics and other healthcare and nutritional products.
Kallyope CEO Nancy Thornberry, who previously led pharmaceutical firm Merck’s diabetes and endocrinology franchise, said: “We are enormously excited to be developing new ways of influencing gut-brain circuits to improve human health.
“Kallyope’s cross-disciplinary approach and technology platform have the potential to translate gut-brain biology into a range of new therapeutic and nutritional programs. Such an approach would not have been possible just a few years ago.”