Pragma Bio Seeks Hidden Cancer Treatments in the Microbiome

Instead of looking for the big cancer drug under a leaf or a rock, Pragma Bio is looking inside the human body - the resident swarm of microbes. The startup, with its new approach and $10 million in new funding, hopes to launch the first part of a 10-year plan.

If you are not aware, the human body is very diverse and interesting. Countless bacteria and other microfauna permeate us, covering every surface, inside and out. Most are benign, a handful are malignant, but many are beneficial in ways we don't fully understand. For whatever reason, some microbes in the body may be associated with better outcomes in a range of diseases, including cancers.

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Pragma Bio

Pragma's approach has two key components. The first is a huge map of microbes, their genes, the proteins, enzymes and other molecules they produce, and how all this might be related to disease pathology. For example, you may have noticed that in people suffering from a particular cancer, those who respond well to treatment A almost always have a similar microbiome profile. A lot of B microbes that you know produce a lot of C molecules. It might be a good idea. Isolate the C molecule and see if it can be used to help others use the A therapy.

But Pragma is building a huge statistical model of all this (with machine learning mixed in, of course) to identify possible candidates for investigation. The first area they are trying to develop is immunotherapy in oncology, which seems to have a particularly close relationship with the microbiome.

Pragma Bio's "self-reading" system skips billions of microbe parts and goes directly from DNA sequence to expression and a small amount of the desired molecule in a few days. This helps when the pool of molecules to choose from is huge. Moreover, the agility makes them a good partner for pharmaceutical companies willing to pay for leads. These partnerships are also necessary for Pragma. Because the next step is where things start to get expensive.