RondinX Release: Company Debuts To Accelerate Drug Development With A Breakthrough Microbiome Computational Platform

RondinX’ Microbiome Platform Builds on an Exclusive License from the Weizmann Institute of Science and Research Collaborations with the Elinav and Segal Labs

TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--RondinX, an emerging pioneer in intelligent microbiome drug development, today unveiled a novel approach to discovering how changes in the human microbiome affect health and disease. RondinX’ cloud-based technology platform adds a new dimension to the microbiome drug development process by profiling and predicting microbial growth dynamics from single metagenomic samples. The scientific foundation was established at the Weizmann Institute of Science and exclusively licensed to RondinX from its commercial arm YEDA Research and Development Company Ltd. RondinX is also closely collaborating with the Weizmann research groups of Professors Eran Segal and Eran Elinav, two key opinion leaders in the microbiome field. The company was seed financed by a group of early-stage investors including Elevator Fund and 8VC and has established a leadership team at its new premises in Tel Aviv.

“We believe that the unique insight into the microbiome dynamics provided by our platform will give RondinX and our future partners a leading edge in microbiome drug discovery and development.”

“RondinX’ approach takes into account that the microbiome represents a highly dynamic ecosystem and can differ greatly from one day to the next, from individual to individual and even in patients suffering from the same disease. By analyzing the patient’s microbiome of tomorrow, today, we are taking the next steps in transforming microbiome knowledge to cures,” said Guy Harmelin, co-founder and CEO of RondinX. “We believe that the unique insight into the microbiome dynamics provided by our platform will give RondinX and our future partners a leading edge in microbiome drug discovery and development.”

The current generation of microbiome drug discovery platforms provide merely a snapshot of the microbiota, a breakdown of the types of organisms present and their relative frequency in a patient’s gut. This static snapshot falls short of providing the industry with a comprehensive tool for understanding the relationship between human microbiomes and disease. Furthermore, RondinX platform has proven to be hypersensitive to various types of microbiome perturbations and is able to prioritize and streamline potential therapeutic strategies.

By using microbiome analytics including growth dynamics, the link between certain members of the microbiome community and specific diseases states has been demonstrated. The results, which were published in SCIENCE in 2015, indicated that type II diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease are uniquely associated with changes in bacterial growth rates. These links could not be observed in the static microbiome population studies based on relative frequency, and therefore, unveiled unique targets for drug discovery that would have remained invisible to other approaches.

“While medical applications are starting to emerge, the industry has yet to acknowledge the true complexity of the microbiome ecosystem. To guide drug discovery and development programs consistently towards the disease-causing or disease-modulating microbes much better tools are needed than what the current generation of microbiome companies are able to provide. We believe that adding growth dynamics will extend the industry’s understanding and help to distinguish active “driver” and “modulator” species from bystander commensal ones,“ added Rafi Gidron, Chairman of the RondinX board.

About RondinX:

Founded in 2016 by leading microbiome experts, RondinX has built a cutting-edge microbiome technology platform set to unlock the potential of microbiome therapeutics. RondinX technology, including its PTR (Peak-to-Trough) family of algorithms, exclusively licensed from YEDA (the commercial arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science), is a proprietary, cloud-based, computational pipeline, integrating raw metagenomics, other omics and patient metadata to derive both static and dynamic strain level insights into the bacterial ecosystem.