BiomX

BiomX is a biotechnology company developing phage therapies for eradicating bacteria associated with chronic diseases that is headquartered in Ness Ziona, Israel and was founded in 2015 by Eran Elinav, Rotem Sorek, Timothy K. Lu, and Timothy Lu.

BiomX uses three primary methods for developing phage therapies and custom phage cocktails, they are: phage hunting, phage engineering, and cocktail optimization. Phage hunting uses a wide range of clinical and environmental phage-containing samples for automated sample processing against bacterial hosts. Phage engineering is used for host range expansion, lysogenic to lytic conversions, payload incorporation, and eradication of bacterial strains to overcome bacterial resistance. Cocktail optimization involves in-vitro and in-vivo multidimensional optimization for host range, biofilm, resistance, receptor analysis, toxic genes, and manufacturing processes.

BiomX accesses targeted bacteria through licensing agreements from academia or industry, and by using their proprietary computational platform. Once identified the selected bacteria go through a target validation process involving patient cohort, in-vitro, ex-vivo, and animal models. The patient cohort analysis involves collecting bacteria samples from both sick and healthy people from all over the world and finding correlations between clinical phenotypes and abundance of certain bacteria to help determine what phage cocktails will be most likely to improve desirable patient outcomes.

BiomX offers a predictive microbiome-based biomarker discovery platform called XMarker for predicting the existence and stage of diseases such as inflammatory bowel syndrome (IBD), liver disease, colorectal cancer, cardiovascular disease, and more. The platform can also predict patient responses to the administration of specific therapeutics for treating IBD and immuno-oncological conditions. XMarker uses a combination of ultra-high resolution DNA analysis, artificial intelligence, and high-scale cloud computing to build its prediction capabilities with high sensitivity and specificity.

BiomX is developing therapeutics for treating acne (BX001), inflammatory bowel syndrome (BX002), primary sclerosing cholangitis (BX003), and colorectal cancer.

BX001 for treating acne is topically administered and made to control skin bacteria, P.acnes and Cutibacterium acnes, associated with acne. BX001 is able to penetrate the bacterias biofilm that makes it resistant to other drugs such as antibiotics.

BX002 for treating inflammatory bowel disease is made to irradiate target bacteria associated with disease onset. These target bacteria were discovered to be inflammatory and possibly have a role in the aggravation and onset of inflammatory bowel disease.

BX003 for treating primary sclerosing cholangitis targets a specific strain of bacteria called Klebsiella pneumoniae (Kp) known for disrupting the intestinal epithelial barrier causing 'leaky gut'.

The company is developing a diagnostic tool for inflammatory bowel syndrome (responder/non-responder) in partnership with Janssen.

On May 15, 2017 BiomX completed their series A funding round with $24 million in funding from Takeda Ventures (lead investor), OrbiMed (lead investor), Johnson & Johnson Innovation (lead investor), Seventure Partners, SBI Japan-Israel Innovation Fund, and Mirae Asset Financial Group.

On February 20, 2019 BiomX completed their series A funding round with $32 million in funding from Seventure Partners (lead investor), RM Global Partners (lead investor), Takeda Ventures, SBI Japan-Israel Innovation Fund, OrbiMed, KB Investment, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Handok, Consensus Business Group, and Chong Kun Dang Pharmaceutical Corp.