Your fa­vorite, fun-lov­ing, poop-test­ing, bac­te­ria-div­ing, un­der fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion, bank­rupt start­up with the pos­si­bly fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed sci­ence is — alas — shut­ting down.

uBio­me has filed to con­vert its Chap­ter 11 bank­rupt­cy in­to a Chap­ter 7 liq­ui­da­tion, all but spelling the end for a once soar­ing com­pa­ny that part­nered with re­searchers at Har­vard and Stan­ford and wooed Sil­i­con Val­ley in­vestors, but ul­ti­mate­ly found it­self ow­ing po­ten­tial­ly hun­dreds of mil­lions to health­care com­pa­nies, lay­ing off half of its staff and un­der fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion for its billing prac­tices.

Joe Jimenez

The news comes bare­ly a year af­ter the com­pa­ny an­nounced an $83 mil­lion fund­ing round and the hir­ing of for­mer No­var­tis CEO Joe Jimenez to head a new R&D arm in Cam­bridge, MA.

What went wrong?

From their 2012 crowd-sourced found­ing un­til the first lay­offs came this Jan­u­ary, it seemed Ubio­me could do no wrong. They were 23andMe for your gut, a young com­pa­ny with young, telegenic founders of­fer­ing a warm face to a hot new sci­ence. They promised to map your mi­cro­bio­me, the 3-pound bac­te­r­i­al ecosys­tem sci­en­tists on­ly re­cent­ly dis­cov­ered had wide im­pacts on your health, from di­ges­tion to men­tal health. Their web­site home page sent “A warm wel­come to you. And your 39 tril­lion bac­te­ria.”

Their pre­mier ser­vice was Ex­plor­er. Orig­i­nal­ly priced at $400, it of­fered to test your stool sam­ple and give back all sorts of health-re­lat­ed ad­vice. Since then, they’ve widened their fo­cus to in­clude vagi­nal health and STDs women face.

But while their blog of­fered fun tips about di­et, sleep and “could your sum­mer fling change your mi­cro­bio­me?” some re­searchers were sound­ing alarms. They of­fered the same warn­ing re­searchers gave about 23andMe’s first for­ays in­to health-re­lat­ed ad­vice: It’s too soon and the sci­ence isn’t there. (23andMe has since gained FDA ap­proval for sev­er­al health-re­lat­ed ser­vices).

Ian Lip­kin Co­lum­bia

“I don’t think we know enough yet about the mi­cro­bio­me to be able to ad­vice peo­ple as to how they should mod­i­fy their di­et or change their lifestyles based on a kit of this sort,” Co­lum­bia epi­demi­ol­o­gist Ian Lip­kin told The At­lantic’s James Ham­blin in a 2016 video, of­fer­ing a 10-year time­frame for when the sci­ence will be ready.

In that video, uBio­me told the quite svelte Ham­blin that based on his test that he had the mi­cro­bio­me of an over­weight, de­pressed man. He did not con­firm the de­pres­sion sug­ges­tion.

The first sign of trou­ble came in Jan­u­ary, when the start­up cut 55 jobs out of its 300-per­son work­force, re­port­ed­ly to fo­cus on drugs and part­ner­ships. In May, founders Jes­si­ca Rich­man and Zac Apte were placed on leave as the FBI be­gan an in­quiry in­to the com­pa­ny’s billing process. This sum­mer, Busi­ness In­sid­er re­port­ed the com­pa­ny had laid off half its staff and that its sci­ence may have been flawed from the start.

They filled for Chap­ter 11 at the be­gin­ning of Sep­tem­ber. Court doc­u­ments re­vealed they may owe hun­dreds of mil­lions to health­care com­pa­nies, BI re­port­ed.

Dupixent, the blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug from Sanofi and Regeneron, has cleared a high-stakes Phase III study in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the companies announced Thursday morning.

If they hold up in a second, identical trial, the data pave the way for Dupixent to become the first biologic to treat patients whose COPD remains uncontrolled despite being on maximal standard-of-care inhaled therapy — the patient population studied in the pivotal program. The companies had spotlighted this as a key readout as they look to expand the Dupixent franchise and explore its full potential.

Novartis is calling off a UK-based trial for Leqvio in the primary prevention of cardiovascular events in patients with high cholesterol, the company confirmed on Wednesday.

The Swiss pharma giant made the decision after “careful evaluation,” a spokesperson told Endpoints News via email. The trial, dubbed ORION-17, was planned in partnership with England’s National Health Service (NHS) and was part of the company’s strategy to establish Leqvio as a standard of care in cardiovascular disease management.

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.