Corey Goodman's upstart biotech garners a $5M Series A

Corey Goodman's fledgling microbiome biotech, Second Genome, has raised $5 million in a small but tidy A round that brought in two new investors. Advanced Technology Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures have jumped on board a bandwagon of venture groups that includes Wavepoint Ventures, Seraph Group and some individual seed investors.

Their money will back an ambitious plan to pursue microbiome-based personalized medicines for a slate of gastrointestinal diseases, including irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, antibiotic-associated diarrhea and necrotizing enterocolitis.

As Ron Leuty at the San Francisco Business Times notes, Second Genome's big idea is to compare the microbiome in healthy guts with diseases ones--analyzing 59,000 bacteria to see which are spurring disease--so they can identify a personalized treatment. And Goodman, a noted academic turned Bay Area biotech entrepreneur, has been gaining support for the upstart.

"Over the past decade we have witnessed the enormous impact that personalized medicine can have on patient care," said Goodman, who co-founded the company--formerly known as PhyloTech--and acts as chairman of the board. "Our ability to analyze the entire microbiome and to identify signatures gives us a key set of tools to unlock the potential of microbiome‐based personalized medicine in major disease areas."

- read the Second Genome release
- here's the story from the San Francisco Business Times