Food as medicine: DayTwo secures US$31m in financing to scale microbiome research platform

01 Jul 2019 --- Microbiome human discovery platform, DayTwo, has raised US$31 million in series B financing. DayTwo, which offers a glycemic control solution for people with Type 2 diabetes, will use the funding to accelerate go-to-market initiatives in the US, where the company partners with payers, providers and employers, and to continue to develop a new generation of products and services for metabolic and gastrointestinal conditions. The financing brings DayTwo’s total funding to US$48 million.

“DayTwo is the only evidence-based, actionable, microbiome platform in the market today. We are in a privileged position to leverage our experience including first-rate science, clinical trials in Israel and the US, tens of thousands of customers and provider, employer and payer relationships,” says Lihi Segal, CEO and Founder of DayTwo. “This deep and broad foundation, coupled with this financing, enables DayTwo to address the large and pressing clinical need to bring food-as-medicine to market for people with Type 2 diabetes in the US.”

DayTwo’s individualized nutrition profile predicts how a person will respond to different foods and food combinations based on their unique gut microbe composition and other clinical parameters. DayTwo’s individualized nutrition profile predicts how a person will respond to different foods and food combinations. 

The round was co-led by aMoon, the leading life sciences venture fund, together with Ofek Ventures, a new venture fund focused on disruptive ICT technologies. Existing investors Seventure Partners and Johnson & Johnson continued their participation in the round. Previous funding rounds included contributions from the Mayo Clinic for the company's validation trial, recently published in JAMA. The financing brings DayTwo's total funding to US$48 Million.

DayTwo’s glycemic control solution uses gut profiling and other clinical parameters to provide a food-as-medicine solution to enable glycemic control. The start-up’s personalized approach provides actionable insights into how the body metabolizes food and allows individuals to navigate what specific foods and meals to choose to balance their blood sugar levels. The glycemic control solution is reportedly more effective than existing protocols for prediabetes and more impactful than leading diabetes pharmaceuticals. 

“We are undergoing a transformational change in healthcare when technology and machine learning can benefit patients with diabetes,” says Yahal Zilka, Managing Partner at Ofek Ventures. “After success in its initial market, we are excited to bring DayTwo to the US, where it has the potential to improve the lives of over one hundred million people with diabetes and prediabetes,” adds Mr. Zilka, whose investment track record includes Waze, Argus, Onavo, DesignArt, Magisto (acquired by Google), Continental, Facebook, Qualcomm and Vimeo, respectively.

DayTwo’s food-as-medicine approach is based on the original research conducted by Professors Eran Segal, Ph.D., and Eran Elinav, MD, Ph.D. at The Weizmann Institute of Science, published in the journal Cell in 2015. The Cell paper demonstrated how the gut microbiome, in conjunction with other clinical and personal parameters, can enable personalized dietary interventions that can successfully balance post-meal glucose response. 

Founded in 2015, DayTwo has offices in Tel Aviv, Israel and the San Francisco Bay Area. The company completed the first quarter of 2019 with tens of thousands of individual customers and hundreds of providers in the DayTwo clinician network. DayTwo also launched a strategic partnership with the world’s second largest HMO, Clalit which now offers the DayTwo glycemic control solution to its 4.5 million members.

“We partnered with DayTwo to realize the full potential of personalization in both preventative care and chronic condition management,” says Irit Poraz, Head Dietitian, at Clalit. “The era of food-as-medicine is here. DayTwo is a pioneer that has brought the only evidence-based, actionable microbiome derived solution to the market. We are pleased to be able to leverage this science and actionability for our plan members.”Rising consumer interest in personalized nutrition is spurring high volumes of start-up activity. 

DayTwo continues to conduct ongoing research with clinical institutional partners including the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Israel Diabetes Association, Joslin Diabetes Center, Janssen a Pharmaceutical Company of Johnson & Johnson, and the Mayo Clinic.  DayTwo also depends on the counsel of their elite scientific advisory board composed of specialists from Tufts School of Nutrition, UCSF, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. DayTwo has published papers based on their science, results and work pioneering food-as-medicine offerings in Cell, Cell Metabolism, Nature, JAMA, and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Disruptive start-ups and consolidation in personalization
Growing consumer interest and scientific backing have paved the way for an arena ready for NPD, investment and start-up activity and a host of companies and start-ups have not let the opportunity pass them by. This is a fact evidenced by a large amount of consolidation taking place, as well as the levels of investment.  

Rising consumer interest is spurring high volumes of start-up activity. Within the space, direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing (GT) is becoming increasingly popular, with a host of companies such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe, marketing genetic “insights” into ancestry and physical attributes. This consumer hype has been reflected by a 23andMe website announcement in 2017 that it had genotyped more than two million customers. Canada-based Nutrigenomix also recently developed the first genetic test kit to be used exclusively by healthcare professionals.  

This year, DSM and Panaceutics also collaborated to bring “cost-effective” personalized nutrition to consumers. Panaceutics uses patented technologies to combine digital data on daily habits, genomics and biomarkers. This then drives its on-demand robotic manufacturing platform to make an individual’s blended formula, delivered in a ready-to-consume, shelf-stable packaged product.