Concept
Function Health and Superpower have demonstrated massive consumer willingness to spend on comprehensive health testing, but they don't provide net new insights beyond standard clinical biomarkers. A platform with proprietary diagnostic IP could build a wedge of patients committed to repeat testing by finally answering questions that traditional panels cannot. Ideally the consumer diagnostics could help explain chronic conditions, predict disease trajectories, and deliver personalized interventions impossible with standard blood work alone.
Longer Description
A company could work on areas of high spend and high unmet need or high societal pressure (e.g. aesthetics). Skin health, muscle health on the aesthetics side and autoimmune on the high unmet need side are clear areas where net new tests could provide helpful and evolving insights, with cause for repeat testing as consumers try interventions.
- Skin microbiomes have a role to play in acne, blemishes, and other conditions. We think there could be large opportunities for skin bacterial diversity profiling (commensal protective strains), gut microbiome composition with metabolite production analysis (short-chain fatty acids, trimethylamine, neuroactive compounds), gut-skin axis correlation mapping for systemic inflammation markers.
- For muscles, myokines are exercise and muscle-derived signaling molecules that regulate metabolism, inflammation, and longevity. We think there could be large opportunities for comprehensive myokine profiling to understand metabolic health and training response. The panel/metabolites investigated might be less proprietary so would have to think about product shipping pace vs. novel biology. However, some low hanging tests include irisin (metabolic health, brown fat activation, insulin sensitivity),
IL-6 (exercise response, anti-inflammatory signaling when exercise-induced) and myostatin (muscle growth regulation, sarcopenia risk).
- Immune System Memory Mapping: VirScan technology can reveal lifetime viral exposures that may trigger chronic conditions. We think there could be large opportunities for comprehensive antibody profiling to explain mysterious fatigue, autoimmune conditions, and post-viral syndromes. Specific opportunities around profiling across 200+ virus species (including EBV, CMV, enteroviruses, herpesviruses, COVID-19 variants), expanded peptide screening for cancer neoantigens, environmental allergens, food proteins, and self-antigens
Antibody reactivity quantification to identify chronic immune activation patterns, autoimmune trigger correlation analysis (viral peptides associated with MS, T1D, RA, SLE onset), chronic infection persistence markers (high-titer antibodies suggesting ongoing viral reactivation). There’s a lot of low hang fruit in using phage display tech for understanding antibody repertoires.
Other thoughts
- It’s very crucial for companies building here to have insights in interventions and longitudinal samples to track how interventions change biomarkers and health generally.
- Companies can launch products around the interventions that work.
- Can use the data and services sales for other companies to use insights to make new products.
Comparable Companies
- Tempus - Combines clinical data with genomic sequencing to improve patient outcomes
- Imyoo - Concentrates on immune disease management and related biobanking
- https://www.sequential.bio/
- Viome
- Moldco
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