Page 97 - Forbes - USA (March 2020)

S omerville, Massachusetts–based Finch cessfully treated, freeze-drying it and delivering the equiva-

Therapeutics is one of the most prom-
lent of a fecal transplant in a single pill. It’s also working on
simpler drugs made from five to 10 key bacteria. It expects
ising startups developing microbiome
drugs. Cofounder Mark Smith, 33, was a results from its first Phase 2 trial (which demonstrates ef-
microbiol ogy grad student at MIT when ficacy) of the full-spectrum C. diff capsule by the end of the
the 20-something C. diff patient begged him for help. “I had second quarter of 2020.
to tell him, I’m a microbiologist, not a doctor,” Smith says. “Even if only a few of the microbiome therapies scientists
The patient’s ordeal motivated Smith to create Open- are working on come to fruition,” Smith says, “it will have a
Biome, the equivalent of a public blood bank for human huge impact on public health.” 95
feces, while Smith was still at MIT in 2013. The Cambridge,
Massachusetts, nonprofit, the first of its kind in the world, nother MIT Ph.D., Bernat Olle, 40, is run- T
has since supplied stool for more than 53,000 transplants A ning Vedanta Biosciences, a nine-year-old H
in 1,200 hospitals and clinics. Cambridge, Massachusetts–based micro- E

Inspired by the demand for transplants, Smith cofound- biome drug developer with $112 million M
I
ed for-profit Finch (named for the diverse group of finches in funding, including $10 million from C
R
Charles Darwin discovered in the Galápagos Islands) in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates investment O
B
2016 to develop an FDA-approved C. diff pill. Currently, supports preclinical research at Vedanta aimed at develop- I
O
most doctors perform fecal transplants through a colonos- ing a gut bacteria–derived drug that would prevent child M
copy, which can cost as much as $5,000. The procedure is malnutrition in the developing world. Nearly 200 million E
not FDA-approved or reliably covered by insurance. children under age 5 suffer from either wasting or stunting,
Smith and his 80 employees occupy two floors in an in- resulting in at least 1.5 million deaths a year. “Malnourished
dustrial park that formerly housed administrative offices children struggle to gain weight even when fed enough,”
and storage space for the Harvard Art Museums. Tall and Olle says. “Emerging research suggests that this is because
slender with piercing blue eyes, he welcomes the inevitable their gut microbiota develop abnormally, and that benefi-
jokes that come with being a human-feces entrepreneur. On cial gut bacterial strains may help correct this imbalance.”
Halloween he wore a poop-emoji costume (“I was a pooper Vedanta also has two partnerships with big pharmaceuti-
trooper”) to the office, where the copiers have names like cal companies, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, to develop
Squatty Potty and Magic Stool Bus. drugs aimed at boosting the effectiveness of immunotherapy
But he has raised serious capital. Venture funds have put to treat melanoma and colorectal and gastric cancers. Like
in $130 million, and Finch has a partnership with Tokyo- Finch, Vedanta is developing a drug to treat recurrent C. diff.
based pharma giant Takeda
to develop drugs for ulcer-
ative colitis and Crohn’s dis-
ease, which together have
10 million sufferers world-
wide. Finch is also working
on an autism drug.
Traditionally, scientists
start with data gathered
through experiments on
mice. Finch is taking a “hu-
man-first” approach, skip-
ping the rodents and ana-
lyzing the stool of human
patients who have recov-
ered after receiving fecal
transplants. “We’re looking
at what works in patients
and figuring out how to
make our drugs from the
top down,” Smith says. “It’s
MICHAEL PRINCE FOR FORBES Finch is extracting what Drugs From Bugs
called reverse translation.”
For one of its C. diff drugs,

Smith describes as the “full
spectrum” of bacteria in a
Bernat Olle, cofounder and CEO of Vedanta Biosciences, in one of Vedanta’s labs
human stool sample from
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “I don’t think there’s any other field of medicine today
a patient who has been suc-

M A R C H 2 0 2 0 that holds as much promise for the future of medicine as the microbiome.” F O R B E S . C O M