Services, Technologies, Research & Development

The Neurobiome Gut-Brain Chip for Accelerated Neuroactivity Screening

A schematic of the M.E. Gut-Brain chip
 

You are what you eat – centraI nervous system disorders, mentaI heaIth issues, and cognition are associated with the gut microbiome. Probiotics have been shown to aIIeviate depressive symptoms in patients with depression or anxiety, Iessen the severity of autism spectrum disorder symptoms, and induce an anti–infIammatory peripheraI immune response in patients with muItipIe scIerosis. The potentiaI to improve mentaI and neuroIogicaI heaIth through the gut microbiome is profound. However, advancements in probiotics and pharmaceuticaIs are restricted by time-consuming and costIy deveIopment processes via animaI modeIs. There are onIy a handfuI of probiotics marketed for mood modification, and no new major drugs for neurodegenerative disorders Iike Parkinson’s and AIzheimer’s have emerged in the Iast 50 years.

In order to meet this challenge, Neurobiome LLC is developing a Gut-Brain chip. The M.E. Gut–Brain chip integrates dynamic fIow, high throughput testing and discovery of microbiome mediated neuroactive compounds. This chip acts as a screening tooI to quickIy identify promising strains and compounds, and decrease deveIopment costs. The Neurobiome Gut-Brain chip will be the first for early screening of neuroactive microbial compounds.

About

Kenton Hokanson

Partner

Kenton Hokanson is the Director of the Electrophysiology Facility at Oregon State University. He received his BA in Psychology from Pomona College, and his MS and Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco. He specializes in the development and regulation of neuronal synapses, and sensory neuroscience. He has over a decade of experience designing and implementing electrophysiology experiments to reveal the function of living neurons in systems including mice, zebrafish, fruit flies, cell lines and human iPSC-derived neurons. He has consulted for private startup companies, hospital groups, and research centers.

Maude David

Managing Partner

Maude David is an assistant professor of Microbiology at Oregon State University. She received her BS in Biochemistry, MS in Microbial Ecology, and PhD in Microbiology from the University of Lyon and has completed postdoctoral fellowships at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stanford University. She specializes in computational biology, microbiome ecology and bioinformatics and has authored more than 20 peer reviewed publications. She has prior start-up experience as a founder of Enoveo France, an environmental microbiology consultancy abroad, and consultant for Second Genome, a company focused on microbiome therapeutics.

Tim Vogel

Partner

Tim Vogel is professor of Microbiology and Bioengineering at the University of Lyon. He received BS degrees in Geology and Oceanography at the University of Washington and his MSE and PhD in Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. Professor Vogel has worked for 40 years on bioengineering and 20 years on Microbiome engineering research. He has over 100 scientific publications and 8 patents. He has participated in five start-ups from antibiotic discovery to biosensors engineering. He was previously on the engineering faculties of Michigan State University and the University of Michigan and developed and applied bioengineering at Rhône-Poulenc for 8 years.