Adding the oral health element to the platform’s already thorough testing parameters—DNA, gut microbiome, and bloods— the firm’s founder and former Olympic athlete Andrew Steele told NutraIngredients the aim is to bolster insights for customers as well as to impact public health by publishing data revealing the connection between the oral microbiome and wider health.
Attained through a saliva swab, the oral microbiome test will allow Stride customers to learn about the diverse ecosystem of more 700 species of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and protozoa that inhabit their mouth.
Steele explained these play a vital role in digestion, immune defence, nutrient synthesis, inflammation regulation and even cognitive health.
“Historically, we’ve always considered oral health as meaning ‘are your teeth healthy?’ but there’s recently been a big growth in understanding and awareness that oral health is systemic to overall system health and it’s even been connected to risk for specific health risks including cardiovascular health and Alzheimer’s Disease,” he told NI.
“I’m really pleased to bring that aspect in because it will be really fascinating as we are able to learn and hopefully publish data in the future to show how this interacts and affects the other biomarkers that we’ve been able to track.”
He explained he feels a duty to support the wider public with the huge dataset he is building.
“Can you imagine a clinical study where the researchers test all these different health markers every six months on tens of thousands of people? It would be like be the most ambitious public health clinical trial conducted but we have the ability to gather this data so it’s important to me that we publish our findings and maybe we can impact public health from the bottom up.
“Once we have the data, maybe this service could be made available through employers or insurers, or through a forward-thinking government somewhere in the world. That’s my sort of Silicon Valley Moon shot!”
From track to trade
After retiring from athletics in 2016, Steele co-founded his first digital health hub DNAFit, a personal genomics company utilizing the world’s first DNA test and providing advice around exercise, nutrition, stress, and sleep.
The company was acquired by Prenetics in 2018 and Steele played a key role in scaling the firm’s EMEA operations as chief products officer, eventually leading to a NASDAQ valuation exceeding $1 billion in 2022.
But Steele still felt something was missing and he launched Stride with his new vision of digital health in May 2024.
“We never quite joined the dots between all our capabilities. We had all these different products that all sort of ticked the boxes, but they didn’t join the dots in any way, he told NI. ”So what I really wanted to do with stride was create a single home where you could have your own multi-omic personal health profile. So we track your genomics, your microbiome and your bloods over time."
He was all too aware that health data alone is of little help to the majority of consumers.
“A typical digital health company will say ‘now you’re empowered with your data, off you go!’ but much of the challenge is the ‘so what?’
“We’ve got all these biomarkers and data and often this leads to advice which is basically general health advice but I wondered if we could plug specific gaps.
“We summarise all of your DNA, your microbiome, your blood and your notes from your consultation into a single piece of prose which says ‘these are the top three things you need to focus on’. Whether it’s a lack of this specific gut bacteria or a certain nutrient, we pick out any concerns and provide nutrition and lifestyle advice to target.”
The platform includes a range of supplements: A liposomal methylated multi-vitamin in a stick packs, a methylated B-complex capsule, and a synbiotic containing five clinically studied probiotic strains plus FOS fibre and vitamin C.
The methylated options are ideal for individuals with impaired methylation capabilities, which can be detected through reduced MTHFR activity through DNA testing.
Steele noted Stride is in phase one of its commercial journey, gathering consumer data in order to provide increasingly personalized advice and a key element of this will be its newly acquired oral microbiome testing platform when it is integrated to the service in the first quarter on 2026..
