UBiome

History

The company was founded by Jessica Richman and Zachary Apte who were scientists in the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences. In November 2012, uBiome generated $350,000 through a crowdfunding campaign. The founders received mentoring and funding from Y Combinator and further funding from Andreessen Horowitz. As of 2015, uBiome had raised a total of more than $6 million but had failed to achieve profitability, and had not set a goal for when the company would turn a profit.

In 2015 uBiome offered a grant program under which is would give grantees $100,000 worth of kits and provide the data, which it also had the right to keep and include in its database. One winner of the first round of such grants was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which had been interested in understanding the human microbiome better and also had an interest in hospital acquired infections; it applied and won such a grant to study microbiomes of people before, during, and after they left a hospital.

As part of their citizen science business model, the company has put out many calls for people with certain kinds of concerns or conditions to send them samples; they launched one related to weight in conjunction with their launch of an Apple app in 2015.

Products and services

Customers purchase kits to sample one or more parts of their body, including the gut, genitals, mouth, nose, or skin. After swabbing, a participant takes a survey which is used to make correlations with microbiome data. The participant sends the kit to the company in the mail and receives data in a few weeks; he or she can compare their data with that of uBiome’s data set. In 2015 uBiome received Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certification from the State of California.

Technology

As of 2015, the company first amplifies RNA using PCR then sequences the amplified 16S ribosomal RNA, which allows bacteria to be categorized at the genus level. The company has proprietary machine learning algorithms that analyze the sequence data and compare it with the company's proprietary database of microbiomes, built from the samples that partners and single customers send to them, and web-based software that allows individuals to view their microbiome and make certain comparisons. A 2014 report in Xconomy said the company outsources the sequencing. The sequencing is done on the Illumina NextSeq500 sequencer.

In October 2015 the company introduced an app on iOS using ResearchKit that allowed customers to view their results on mobile devices.

Controversies

Amy Dockser Marcus noted in a 2014 essay in The Wall Street Journal that when Ubiome raised its initial round of crowdfunding in early 2013, many questions were raised by bioethicists about the company's citizen science business model - namely whether it had actually obtained informed consent from its customers, and whether direct to consumer genetic testing initiatives could be ethically conducted at all, and its lack of Institutional review board (IRB) approval. The Wall Street Journal essay also noted that questions were raised about the quality of data obtained in citizen science initiatives, with regard to self-selection and other issues.

The company obtained IRB approval in July 2013.

In 2014, people experienced in biotechnology entrepreneurship also raised questions about the ethics of crowdfunding a biotech company, as the risks of such ventures are high even for people with scientific and business sophistication.

UBiome has been compared with Theranos and 23andme, each of which are also biotechnology companies influenced by Silicon Valley and each of which sparked widespread interest and controversy.