Venture Philanthropy / Florey Biosciences
An engineered probiotic to manage the impacts of antibiotics
The problem
Antibiotics decimate the gut microbiome
In 2022, American healthcare professionals wrote over 236 million antibiotic prescriptions — equivalent to 700 prescriptions per 1000 persons in the United States. Antibiotics are life-saving medicines, but their use comes with unintended consequences: every time a person takes an antibiotic, it disrupts resident bacteria and promotes the growth of harmful, antibiotic-resistant microbes in the gut. This can give rise to the spread of antibiotic resistance and opportunistic pathogens like C. difficile, and disregulation of the host’s digestive, metabolic, and immune systems.
In cancer in particular, antibiotics are often critical and unavoidable, but they carry specific risks to patients. Immunotherapy is one of the most promising new frontiers of cancer treatment, but overall survival is about half as long for patients who received antibiotics before immunotherapy. The underlying reason is twofold: the microbiome influences cancer susceptibility and progression, while also enhancing the effectiveness of immunotherapy treatment by boosting immune response.
The Solution
A probiotic shield
Florey Biosciences is developing a novel medical food aimed at managing the impacts of antibiotics on the gut microbiome. Florey’s technology platform, an application of which was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, can be used to deliver any protein of interest to the gut. Florey’s first product is a medical food based on an engineered yeast strain for use alongside antibiotics. It is intended for the dietary management of antibiotic perturbations of the gut microbiome. The underlying yeast strain is well characterized and produced commercially, de-risking critical attributes of the end product and supporting cost-efficient manufacturing at scale.
The Team
Synthetic biology engineers and innovative entrepreneurs
Andrés Cubillos-Ruiz
CEO & Co-founder
Andrés Cubillos-Ruiz, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Florey Biosciences, is an MIT-trained microbiologist with expertise in microbial evolution and bioengineering. At Harvard’s Wyss Institute, he developed an engineered probiotic to manage antibiotic effects on the gut.
Raphaël Gayet
CSO and Co-founder
Raphaël V. Gayet, PhD, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Florey Biosciences, leads Florey’s development of engineered probiotics. He is an MIT-trained biological engineer with expertise in nucleic acid technologies for material sciences and RNA therapeutics. At Harvard’s Wyss Institute, he designed probiotics for metabolic health and diabetes.