Microbiome Labs Taps CosmosID For Co-Development Of BiomeFx Functional Gut Microbiome Test

Rockville, MD /PRNewswire/ - BiomeFx is an innovative and accurate gut microbiome test launched earlier this year by Microbiome Labs. The stool test is the result of a co-development partnership between CosmosID, Rockville-based provider of industry-leading bioinformatics software and laboratory services for microbiome R&D and infectious disease applications, and Microbiome Labs, the leaders in innovating microbiome solutions for healthcare practitioners.

Under the agreement, the CosmosID lab and software engineering teams have developed the platform for sequencing, analysis and reporting powering the BiomeFx test. With the current version of the BiomeFx report, clients gain access to an unprecedented amount of information on gut microbiome health. In addition to highly resolved information on gut microbiota composition, the test offers insight into microbiome function by revealing the metabolic potential of a client's gut microbiota. To better support urgent cases, a rapid-turnaround option is now commercially available.

BiomeFx is currently distributed to physicians, dietitians, and practitioners of functional medicine in the US and has reached several thousand customers since its early access launch in March.

"Most stool tests available today lack accuracy and reproducibility and ultimately fail to deliver actionable insights because they cannot reveal how the gut microbiome interacts with important health functions. Our ambition with BiomeFx was to drive the innovation necessary to overcome these widespread limitations," says Kiran Krishnan, Microbiologist and Chief Scientific Officer of Microbiome Labs. "Partnering with CosmosID, the industry leader in accurate microbiome analysis, was the obvious choice for this co-development partnership. CosmosID brings access to industry-leading and award-winning analytics and databases and operates a laboratory optimized for microbiome sequencing and infectious disease assay development."

"We see a growing demand for gut microbiome tests that are sufficiently accurate and functionally informative to enable healthcare professionals to deliver on the promise of personalized healthcare and nutrition. Conventional stool tests rely on methods that are either limited to only detecting a small part of the gut microbiome or that fail to identify gut microbes correctly and with species and subspecies level resolution," says Manoj Dadlani, CEO of CosmosID. "As a company specialized in supporting pre-clinical and clinical microbiome R&D with sequencing and bioinformatics for taxonomic and functional microbiome analysis, CosmosID is uniquely positioned to develop end-to-end microbiome testing platforms that are fast and cost efficient, yet highly accurate and reproducible."

More information about the BiomeFx test is available at https://www.biomefx.com/. BiomeFx is not intended to be used as a diagnostic test but can be used in conjunction with other testing methods to provide a more complete picture.

Under the next phase of the co-development agreement, both companies plan to launch SARS-CoV-2 detection as an add-on feature of the BiomeFx stool test.