The collaborative agreement will see Irish start-up Food Marble manage the eight-week study in a group of 20 individuals. The study will use two different prebiotic fibres and will be supported by gut health analysis services from Carbiotix.
“This collaboration agreement and study is a very important step on route to increasing the frequency and amount of gut health data that can be made available for an individual by making it easier to collect this data,” commented Kristofer Cook, CEO of Carbiotix.
“By understanding the correlation between digestive health and gut health, one will be able to leverage the Food Marble digestive tracker to help diagnose and monitor gut health on a daily basis, supported and validated by more comprehensive gut health data based on faecal sampling,” he suggested – noting that ‘eventually’, the platform could be used to modify the dosing of Carbiotix therapeutic products in real-time.
“This first study will demonstrate whether the proposed correlation exists and serve as a basis to evaluate future collaborative opportunities between Carbiotix and Food Marble with regards to studies and the bundling of products and services.”
Irish breath tests
Irish entrepreneur Aonghus Shortt co-founded FoodMarble, a company that developed a portable breath test device and connected app named AIRE in 2018 claiming to help people with digestive issues to pinpoint problem foods.
While undertaking his electrical engineering PhD he witnessed the impacts of digestion problems as his fiancé struggled with IBS – noting that the health system wasn’t set up to offer her the required nutritional advice to help with the debilitating digestive health problem.
“This is a really common problem that’s not really catered for by the health system. You go the GP and they do some tests to exclude serious underlying illnesses but after that it’s not really their role to discuss nutrition,” Shortt previously told NutraIngredients.
After reading about the benefits of the Low FODMAP diet and discovering that there were clinic-based breathalysers being used to test people’s individual responses to different types of carbohydrates, his engineering mind started to question how the device could be made smaller, portable and more affordable for everyday people like his fiancé.
“I wanted to take that technology, miniaturise it, make it more cost effective.”
The company now produces and sells a miniaturised device that saw $1 million of sales before its official launch in December 2018.
Swedish microbiome analysis
Personalised prebiotics and microbiome analysis player Carbiotix has grown a significant offering in the recent years, closing funding of more than €1m over the past 4 years.
The personalised nutrition firm, initially spun-out from the department of biotechnology at Lund University, focuses on gut health solutions and microbiome therapeutics.
In early 2018 the company launched its PersonalGut service, telling NutraIngredients at the time that the novel personalised subscription service would be based on monthly microbiome testing that provides a ‘feedback loop’ to modify dosage of soluble fibres.
Less than a month later, speaking at our IPA World Congress + Probiota 2018 in Barcelona, Carbiotix CEO Kristofer Cook launched the world’s lowest cost monthly microbiome testing service. Priced at between €9 and €19 per month, Cook said the test will make monthly microbiome insights possible for the mass market consumer.
Earlier this year Carbiotix also teamed up with UK-based TrooFoods, a prebiotic breakfast brand, to offer the first ever gut health tracking service for fibre-based food products.
“By embracing transparency and true gut health data, we beliee that TrooFoods will create a competitive advantage in terms of offering better products, building brand loyalty and improving the overall customer experience," said Carbiotix CEO Cook at the time.
“We believe this will drive sales as customers better understand the link between their gut health and TrooFoods products.”