96
FORBES.COM MARCH 20 20T
IMPA
N
NELL^
FOR^FORBESTHETRENDInside Vedanta’s maze of labs and storage rooms is an
oversized freezer containing fecal matter from 275 donors
on four continents, including an indigenous tribe in Papua
New Guinea. Vedanta is isolating and then testing bacteria
from each sample in the hope of determining which strains
make the most effective drugs.
A wiry Catalan immigrant with close-cropped salt-and-
pepper hair who bicycles to work, Olle came to the U.S.
in 2002 to study chemical engineering at MIT, where he
focused on the emerging science of using live organisms
like bacteria to produce drugs. In 2007, after earning both
an MIT doctorate and an MBA from the Sloan School, he
joined PureTech Health, a Boston biotech firm.
In 2010 PureTech backed him in launching Vedanta
with five cofounders, all scientists, including big names
such as Kenya Honda, a microbiology professor at Keio
University medical school in Tokyo. Honda had published
a groundbreaking paper on the connection between gut
bacteria and regulatory T cells, known to prevent inflam-
matory diseases. “Think of them as the U.N. peace forces
of the intestine,” Olle says. “Honda’s work suggested that
the cells encoded in human DNA are influenced by the
bacteria that live within you.”
“This work has forced me to rethink what it means to be
human,” Olle says. “We are not just the product of the Homo
sapiens genome.”E
very gold rush attracts
its share of charlatans
and claim jumpers.
More than a half-
dozen startups are
using the microbiome as a marketing
buzzword to sell stool-analysis tests.
The kits, which require the consumer
to mail a small sample to a lab, pur-
port to convey valuable personalized
health data and nutrition advice. That
despite a consensus among scientists
that it’s not yet possible to draw useful
dietary recommendations from a per-
son’s poop. To avoid hostile oversight
by the FDA, the kit sellers are careful
to make no specific claims about diag-
nosing or treating particular diseases.
Four years ago, former InfoSpace
billionaire Naveen Jain, 60, launched
Bellevue, Washington–based Viome,
which sells a $119 “gut intelligence
test” online. After analyzing a pea-sized
stool sample, it sends customers a cus-
tomized 60-page report with dietary
recommendations “aimed at balanc-
ing your overall microbiome.” It might
recommend, for instance, increasing
consumption of “superfoods” like al-
falfa sprouts and anchovies or avoiding
green beans and kombucha. Jain says
Viome has sold more than 100,000 kits
and banked more than $15 million in revenue last year.
“Viome’s claims are not supported by any scientific litera-
ture,” says Jonathan Eisen, a medical microbiology professor
who directs microbiome research at the University of Cali-
fornia, Davis. “What they’re saying is, in fact, deceptive.” A
dozen former Viome staffers say they believe the company
was selling a product of dubious value. Six of those ex-staffers
describe the food recommendations as “pseudoscience.”
“Anyone who says this doesn’t understand how our sci-
ence works and how we make recommendations,” Jain
counters. “It’s not my job to convince everyone; it’s my job
to continue to help make the world a better place.”
A nonstop talker prone to enthusiastic, stream-of-
consciousness self-promotion, Jain immigrated to the U.S.
from India in 1982 and worked at Microsoft from 1989 until
1996, when he founded InfoSpace, also in Bellevue, which
delivered internet content to early cellphones. His net
worth ballooned to $8 billion, then crashed to $220 million
when the first internet bubble burst. A flood of shareholder
suits followed, and the InfoSpace board fired him as CEO in
late 2002. Before he left InfoSpace, he bought a $13 million
stucco mansion on the shores of Lake Washington not far
from Jeff Bezos’ and Bill Gates’ pads.
Despite having no background in science or medicine,
Jain has managed to raise $75 million from investors in-
cluding Benioff and Khosla. Both declined to comment onMedicine Show
Viome founder Naveen Jain at company headquarters in a Bellevue, Washington,
WeWork space. “The goal is to scientifically show that it’s not voodoo stuff or a placebo.”