NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Consumer wellness startup Onegevity Health said today that it has signed a licensing agreement with Kirin Holdings and Mitsui to launch Onegevity's testing system in Japan and to develop unique nutritional products using the firm's AI-based platform.
As part of the collaboration, the partners will start offering Onegevity's GutBio assay, which combines metagenomic sequencing with AI-based personalized recommendations to increase gut the user's health, in Japan.
New York-based Onegevity will expand its own services later this year to include whole-exome sequencing, blood testing, and data-driven nutritional product development. The firm said that Mitsui and Kirin's experience in developing international markets and products, respectively, will help accelerate its plans to scale health intelligence in consumer markets.
"This brings our best-in-class algorithms and integrated approaches to genomics to the Japanese market, as well as opening … larger opportunities for development with unique, Japanese materials and microbes," Onegevity Cofounder Christopher Mason said in a statement.
Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
"I believe Onegevity Health's AI platform, which integrates multiple health-related data sources and generates insights from machine learning, provides us with crucial knowledge to develop new nutritional products, particularly in the pre- and pro-biotics spaces," Shinro Fujita, Kirin Holdings' general manager of corporate strategy, said in a statement.
In February, Onegevity added Gencove's low-pass genome sequencing and analytics into its service. The company has also partnered with dietary supplements firm Thorne, which has received a joint strategic investment from Mitsui and Kirin.