Zeiss and Perseus Biomics partner to shed light on microbiome

09 Jun 2020 --- Technology enterprise Zeiss has partnered with newly established venture Perseus Biomics to develop an optical technology to further research of the microbiome. The partnership aims to leverage and develop Perseus’s “MAP” platform for quantitative analysis toward this purpose. This technology is regarded as delivering a quick and cost-effective way to characterize the microbiome. By means of quantitative analysis, the partnership aims to unlock the full potential of research toward personalized medicine. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

“We have assembled a first-class scientific and R&D team that aims to revolutionize microbiome analysis, making it faster, more precise and more affordable, while opening the way for broad reach personalized medicine,” says Walid Hanna, Executive Chairman of Perseus Biomics. The microbiome analytics startup was established in January this year.

“We see [this partnership with Zeiss] as a formidable opportunity to accelerate the development and launch of Perseus’s MAP platform and establish it as a pioneer in the field of microbiome abundance mapping. Access to Zeiss technology expertise in optics and its global market reach will be critical in the success of Perseus,” adds Hanna.

Gerrit Schulte, Head of Zeiss Ventures, highlights that this investment is a way of consistently implementing Zeiss’s strategy in the field of Advanced Sensor and Data Solutions. Moreover, this research has substantial implications for medicine, agriculture and other areas. 

“The microbiome is a field of strong research interest with the potential to fundamentally change our understanding of living systems. Abundant analysis of the microbiome is one key element of this research and Perseus’s innovative optical technology has the potential to enable it at a new level,” Schulte asserts. 

Zeiss is a Germany-based technology enterprise operating in the fields of optics and optoelectronics. In the previous fiscal year, the Zeiss Group generated annual revenue totaling more than €6.4 billion (US$7.2 billion) in its four segments Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology, Industrial Quality & Research, Medical Technology and Consumer Markets. Its portfolio is aligned with future growth areas like digitalization, healthcare and Smart Production.

Meanwhile, Perseus is a young enterprise arising from research conducted at top European research institutions. It aims to develop a novel method for microbiome analytics and to offer it as a service to the research community. Its innovative optical technology is touted as targeting cost-effective, quantitative, reliable and fast analysis relevant for the rapidly growing microbiome research field.

Further research and technology can facilitate understanding the human microbiome.Meticulous microbiome mapping
As the trend for personalized health continues to take over the nutrition industry, this research could be instrumental in completing the scientific community’s understanding of the microbiome. 

Mapping the microbiome is a laborious undertaking. An early endeavor to map the human microbiome began in 2008, called the Human Microbiome Project (HMP), which is supported by the National Institute of Health (NIH), part of the US Department of Health and Human Services. The HMP aims to support characterizing the human microbiota to further the scientific community’s consensus on the impact of the microbiome on human health and disease. 

The first phase of the project, HMP1, characterized the microbial communities from 300 healthy individuals, across their nasal passages, oral cavity, skin, gastrointestinal tract and urogenital tracts. The NIH recently reported it will be focusing on precision nutrition to accelerate nutrition science discoveries over the next decade, which will reflect a wide range of nutrition research – including the microbiome – supported across the institute.

Last August, Harvard University researchers found over 45 million different sets of genes, in which over half of these were unique to the individual. The researchers sought to build a resource that quantifies the human microbiome, its role in disease and the scale of its genetic diversity.

In recent technological advancements in the field of personalized health, whole-body computational models have been developed to further propel research into personalized medicine, including the role of diet on the microbiome. Named Harvey and Harvetta, the virtual humans successfully predict known biomarkers of inherited metabolic diseases and enable the exploration of potential metabolic interactions between humans and their gut microbiomes at a personal level.

Edited by Anni Schleicher