Nestlé is bet­ting $525M on a bid to pi­o­neer world's first mi­cro­bio­me drug

Af­ter fight­ing a years-long up­hill bat­tle with its oral mi­cro­bio­me can­di­date SER-109, Seres Ther­a­peu­tics fi­nal­ly got the Phase III re­sults it was look­ing for last Au­gust. And on Thurs­day, the com­pa­ny inked a $525 mil­lion deal with Nestlé Health Sci­ence to com­mer­cial­ize the drug — that is, if it can win over the FDA.

SER-109 is an oral, live mi­cro­bio­me ther­a­py be­ing de­vel­oped for pa­tients with re­cur­rent C. dif­fi­cile in­fec­tion, a lead­ing cause of hos­pi­tal-ac­quired in­fec­tions in the US. The can­di­date is made up of pu­ri­fied Fir­mi­cutes spores (a type of bac­te­ria) man­u­fac­tured from the stool of healthy donors, and is de­signed to rapid­ly re­pop­u­late the mi­cro­bio­me in the gut.

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