Biology company Viome Life Sciences recently announced the launch of a new at-home test that it says leverages gene expression analysis in three essential health areas: the gut microbiome, oral microbiome, and cells. These unique markers are proven to be crucial to understanding an individual’s health and addressing the root causes of disease and aging.
“You can think of these as the master regulators of various important functions in your body that are critical to your health and keeping you alive. Understanding more about an individual’s gut microbiome, oral microbiome, and cellular functions and how they interact uniquely within every individual can help us uncover the root causes of chronic disease, which is often the result of chronic inflammation in the body caused by a poor diet and unhealthy lifestyle habits. It’s no longer a mystery that our food choices impact our health,” said Viome CEO and Founder Naveen Jain. “Our recent research has shown that evidence-based precision nutrition improves the clinical outcome (BioRxiv). An unhealthy diet, including eating ‘healthy’ foods that are not beneficial for everyone, can lead to low-grade inflammation and chronic inflammation.”
Decoding health
With a combination of proprietary gene expression (mRNA) sequencing technology and artificial intelligence, Viome makes sense of the massive amount of data received from users (over 400,000) and identifies specific biomarkers of health. Viome analyzes human (cellular) and microbial (gut & oral) activities to provide health insights and food and supplement recommendations to improve health by modulating the underlying molecular pathways.
“Viome’s proprietary sequencing technology was developed at Los Alamos National Lab to study the gut microbiome, oral microbiome, blood transcriptome, and broader human-microbe interactions throughout the body in unprecedented detail. The results of this technology’s capabilities are reshaping our understanding of human biology and modern medicine,” explained Jain.
The Full Body Intelligence Test provides insights that include a person's biological age, inflammation response, immune system health, gut health, oral health, heart health, and brain and cognitive health, along with over 50 more subscores that give insight into an individuals' pathway activities. Based on each person's unique biological data, Viome’s state-of-the-art AI engine analyzes and recommends clinically-backed food and supplement ingredients that are ideal for each individual's body, targeting all of the essential functions that play a role in how fast they age, how they feel, how they look and their body's resilience to stress and illness.
How it works
The test kit includes tools to collect tiny samples of stool, saliva, and blood at home, along with a prepaid postage label. Within 2 weeks, customer health scores will become available through the app with precise recommendations of 400+ foods that they should be eating more of, minimizing, and avoiding altogether based on the individual test results.
“Viome also goes a step further for those looking to amplify their health with nutrients that optimize specific functions that need support. We’ve created the industry’s first custom-formulated supplements made-to-order for each individual based on their underlying molecular data from their test. Because gene expression isn’t static like genes and can reveal whether an individual is trending towards or away from better health, we recommend that users retest every four to six months to see the changes in their scores. If they are on our supplements and/or probiotics, this allows us to readjust the ingredients and dosages based on their most recent data. Precision is key,” said Jain.
Science
Jain told NutraIngredients-USA that Viome’s comprehensive research program has already enrolled over 16,000 study participants in over 20 chronic disease areas and has published several research papers in peer-reviewed journals.
“In April of 2021, we conducted clinical trials to test the efficacy of our precision nutrition approach and identified the microbiome determinants of depression, anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and type 2 diabetes,” said Jain. He added that following these clinical trials, Viome’s scientists converted these newly discovered microbiome determinants into nutritional recommendation algorithms for extremely precise personalized diets and precision supplements.