Evolve BioSystems gets $55 million investment led by Cargill Evolve BioSystems has announced $55 million in funding from Cargill and a private equity firm to bring its infant probiotic to market scale.
Evolve Biosystems is an independent microbiome research company that was launched out of University of California, Davis in 2014. It was initially funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Also participating in the funding announced this week was investment firm Manna Tree.
Evolve BioSystems has concentrated on infant gut health and the importance of the
Bifidobacterium infantis species of gut microbe. Research has shown that this species predominates in the guts of babies that are breastfed. The bacterium preferentially feeds upon the otherwise undigestible human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) found in breast milk.
Evolve BioSystems Announces Major Strategic Investment from Cargill and Manna Tree to Support Innovative Probiotic That Dramatically Improves Infant Gut Health
Evolve s innovative probiotic addresses widespread Newborn Gut Deficiency by restoring key bacteria in the infant gut microbiome
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DAVIS, Calif., Feb. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ Evolve BioSystems announced today that it completed a substantial first close in a $55 million Series D round of funding, led by Cargill, the global food, agricultural, financial and industrial products company and Manna Tree, an investment firm committed to improving human health. The new capital will be used to help the company continue commercializing a next generation of probiotic capable of addressing a widespread deficiency in the infant gut microbiome.
The finding raises troubling questions about how to effectively eliminate the poison from children’s bodies.
The battery recycling industry is responsible for much of the lead soil contamination in poor and middle-income countries.
Decades after the industrialized world largely eliminated lead poisoning in children, the potent neurotoxin still lurks in one in three children globally.
“Once the lead is in the environment, it stays there pretty much indefinitely without remediation,” says study lead author Jenna Forsyth, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “Ultimately, we want to work toward a world in which battery recycling is done safely, and lead never makes it into the soil or people’s bodies in the first place.”
Decades after the industrialized world largely eliminated lead poisoning in children, the potent neurotoxin still lurks in one in three children globally. A new study in Bangladesh by researchers at Stanford University and other institutions finds that a relatively affordable remediation process can almost entirely remove lead left behind by unregulated battery recycling – an industry responsible for much of the lead soil contamination in poor and middle-income countries – and raises troubling questions about how to effectively eliminate the poison from children’s bodies.
Workers dig up contaminated soil and waste at the site of a former lead battery recycling operation in Kathgora, Bangladesh. (Image credit: Pure Earth)