Personalised prebiotic start-up Carbiotix shows early promise in modulating gut bacteria

The Swedish-based biotechnology firm, initially spun-out from the department of biotechnology at Lund University, said aggregated results from the first six months of its personalised prebiotic subscription service PersonalGut showed promising results.

At the start of this year Carbiotix launched its PersonalGut service, telling NutraIngredients at the time​ that the novel personalised subscription service would be based on monthly microbiome testing that provides a ‘feedback loop’ to modify dosage of soluble fibres. Less than a month later, speaking at our IPA World Congress + Probiota 2018 in Barcelona, Carbiotix CEO Kristofer Cook launched the world’s lowest cost monthly microbiome testing service. Priced at between €9 and €19 per month, Cook said the test will make monthly microbiome insights possible for the mass market consumer.

Now, the company says the data from its first six months of operation in the personalised prebiotics space have showed a dramatic success rate for improving gut health – as measured by the company’s own Fibre Loving Bacteria (FLB) analysis tool.

According to Carbiotix, nearly 100% of customers using PersonalGut ​experienced an improvement in gut health after four months of using the service – with over 60% approaching an optimal gut health in the period.

“The current results, although preliminary, are very encouraging and we will continue to build further confirmation of our efficacy as customers send in their monthly gut microbiome samples and our customer base grows,”​ said Carbiotix CTO, Peter Falck.

Developing science​

Carbiotix CEO, Kristofer Cook noted that in many cases it has taken years, if not decades, for people to develop poor gut health.

“So asking our customers to be patient and spend four months to improve their gut health and a further couple of months to optimize their gut health is quite reasonable, especially given the effectiveness of the approach,”​ he commented.

In addition to providing further validation for Carbiotix approach, the new data which shows aggregated timeframes for improvement in FLB scores, could provide further points for new research and development, said Carbiotix.

“We unfortunately had several customers who expected a quick-fix solution leave our service early on and we did not have the experience to explain when they would see an improvement,”​ said Cook. “This is definitely not the case anymore and we now see very clear and common gut health patterns in this initial period and beyond.”​

The Swedish start-up added that the end result of a raised FLB score – as achieved by users of the service – is indicative of a gut flora that is much more diverse and stable, and much less sensitive to foods that may have previously caused discomfort.

The company suggested that such stability could prove to play an important role in early disease detection, with the company’s recent discovery that an optimised and stable gut flora is highly sensitive to the onset of unexplained and sustained inflammation in the body.

“There are many scientists who believe that a large number of leading metabolic and chronic diseases such as Type-2 diabetes, IBS, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, certain cancers and neurological diseases are a result of inflammation caused by the starving of these good gut bacteria and a disproportionate presence of pathogenic species, directly attributable to our modern diet lacking adequate fibre,”​ commented Falck