Seres Health Raises $10 Million For Drugs That Rebalance Body's Bacteria

Seres Health has announced that it has raised $10 million to develop drugs that rebalance bacteria inside the body. Seres Health also announced that it has entered into an exclusive research collaboration with the Mayo Clinic. The funds were raised from investors such as the Mayo Clinic, Alexandria Venture Investments, Flagship Investors, and Enso Ventures. The company raised $10.5 million this past November, bringing the total amount the company has raised to $20.5 million.

Roger Pomerantz, the company’s president, recently appointed CEO, and chairman, stated that the series B funding would help Seres further its research on its different drugs, which the company is calling Ecobiotic therapeutics.  Among those Ecobiotic therapeutic drugs is SER-109, which is currently undergoing phase 1/2 trials and is the company’s furthest advanced drug candidate. SER-109 treats patients with recurrent C. difficile, which is a bacteria that can afflict patients who have recently been treated with antibiotics. SER-109 can cause a variety of symptoms, with light cases causing only diarrhea, and more dramatic infections causing potentially fatal inflammation of the colon.

SER-109 is made up of spores of bacteria from the colon to restore microbiome balance. Pomerantz went on to say that, “The oral drug is not made of living organisms and is ‘very pure and clean’ as compared with fecal micobiota transplantation.”

The next step for the company, according to Pomerantz, is to take SER-109 directly into late stage trials. He stated that the company believes the drug can be approved in just a few years’ time. Pomerantz also said that the company could expand Ecobiotic therapeutics to other areas, including autoimmune diseases and adult-onset diabetes.