Nexilico awarded $1M to develop an AI-driven discovery platform for precision microbiome engineering

Danville, CA, October 31, 2023 – Nexilico announced today that it has been awarded $1M in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop a computational discovery platform for development of microbiome therapeutics for a variety of indications.

The human microbiome, the complex and dynamic community of microorganisms residing in various parts of the human body, has been implicated in a wide variety of diseases. Despite the increasing interest to engineer the microbiome as a new prevention and treatment strategy, complexity and variability of the microbiome have substantially challenged the development of products that could effectively engineer the microbiome toward a healthy state.

Nexilico has developed a novel computational platform based on its microbiome digital twin technology that addresses the shortcomings of the current approaches in design and discovery of interventions targeting the microbiome. This new disease-agnostic platform was successfully shown to reliably and cost-effectively design precision microbiome therapeutics with enhanced effectiveness as evaluated through microbiome signatures and clinical response.

“The ongoing support from the NSF SBIR program underscores Nexilico’s unique technology in advancing the next generation of microbiome engineering products,” said Mohammad Soheilypour, PhD, Chief Executive Officer at Nexilico. “We are excited to further develop our technology that enables the development of much-needed innovative treatments for millions of patients worldwide”.

“Microbiome studies and intervention testing are costly and slow, with data generation ultimately limiting insights into effective treatments,” said Wyatt Hartman, Director of R&D at Nexilico. “This funding enables us to expand our virtualization platform at a scale where AI driven discovery is no longer limited by the rate of lab results– though it both informs and is informed by them”.

The NSF SBIR is a highly competitive funding program with only less than 5% of applicants receiving both a Phase I and a Phase II award. Nexilico received the Phase I award in 2020 and the Phase II award in 2023. Small businesses with Phase II funding are eligible to receive up to $500,000 in additional matching funds with qualifying third-party investment or sales.

About Nexilico

Nexilico is a biotechnology company that employs the power of computational and systems biology to address challenging problems in medicine and biotechnology. As a pioneer in the next generation in silico microbiome technologies, Nexilico advances scientific understanding about the role of microbiomes in health and disease and leverages that information to develop novel microbiome-based technologies. Learn more at www.nexilico.com

About the National Science Foundation's Small Business Programs: America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF awards $200 million annually to startups and small businesses, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. Startups working across almost all areas of science and technology can receive up to $2 million to support research and development (R&D), helping de-risk technology for commercial success. America’s Seed Fund is congressionally mandated through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $8.5 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering.