NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – San Francisco-based uBiome today announced the launch of its CLIA laboratory to provide clinical testing based on its microbial assays.
The tests, which evaluate the patient's microbiome for "clinically relevant results," were developed in part with data gathered in a citizen science project, the firm said in a statement.
The firm's mission is "to transform research into useful products based on the microbiome," Co-founder and CEO Jessica Richman said in a statement. "Through our research partnerships with thousands of citizen scientists and dozens of universities, including Harvard, Stanford, and [the University of California, San Francisco], we have gathered millions of data points and built a set of tools that have enabled us to create clinical tests for doctors and patients."
Started by researchers at UCSF, uBiome raised more than $120,000 in crowdfunding to begin its microbiome sequencing project. The firm said that people will still be able to participate in basic research studies of the microbiome and that those tests will be clearly differentiated from clinical tests at the new laboratory.