Nestlé Health Science and Enterome are jointly creating Microbiome Diagnostics Partners (MDP), which aims to lead the development and commercialization of innovative microbiome-based diagnostics.

It holds the potential to transform therapeutic approaches across a broad spectrum of challenging health conditions, including inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) and liver diseases. The partnership follows Nestlé Health Science’s initial investment announced in April 2016.

MDP’s initial focus will be accelerating Enterome’s diagnostic programs, which include IBD 110 for the assessment and management of mucosal healing and MET210 for NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis).

Current standard of care for these conditions include invasive procedures such as endoscopy and biopsies, rather than a non-invasive stool/serum combined Dx tests that will be developed by MDP.

Future innovation efforts will leverage advanced microbial and serum-based metabolic technologies developed respectively at Enterome and Nestlé Health Science’s diagnostics arm Prometheus Laboratories.

Microbiome Diagnostics Partners (MDP) will be a 50:50 joint venture between Enterome and Nestlé Health Science.

Prometheus will contribute its Diagnostics (Dx) development and commercialization expertise.

Enterome will contribute its current microbiome diagnostic programs and intellectual property (IP) derived from its unique microbiome-based platform for the development of Dx in all therapeutic areas except immuno-oncology.