Microba Life Sciences expands into the US with multi-million-dollar partnership

Brisbane-based Microba have partnered with US company Psomagen to deliver gut microbiome analysis technology to the US market.

Queensland’s Minister for Innovation, Tourism Industry Development and the Cross River Rail, The Hon. Kate Jones, announced the expansion at a business breakfast held in Brisbane this morning.

Microba CEO Blake Wills, then spoke on a panel with fellow business men and women to share the company’s rapid growth from a launch in March 2018 and the first gut microbiome testing kit released in June of the same year.

Since then, Microba has become recognised as a leader in the microbiome field.

Psomagen is an established biotechnology company in Maryland, United States. Psomagen will launch a test into the US by the end of 2019 using Microba’s analysis capabilities.

Blake Wills, CEO of Microba, said the deal had the potential to be a multi-million-dollar value partnership between the two companies, expanding the availability of world-leading gut microbiome analysis to consumers in the United States.

“Microba’s partnership with Psomagen will allow our processing capabilities both in the lab and through data analysis to expand into the US market and bring innovation born in Queensland, Australia overseas into a large market,” he said.

“As a Brisbane-based biotech company, we are pleased to partner with Psomagen who have been operating for more than 15-years in the United States.”

Microba’s proprietary Metagenomic Analysis Platform (MAP™) will be utilised to process the samples.

This same platform was awarded the 2019 product innovation award at the Brisbane Lord Mayor’s Awards Friday night (18 OCT.)

Mr Wills said that moving into the US market allowed Microba to not only rapidly expand but also to take world-leading processing and analysis capabilities overseas into a large, established market.

“This joint venture enables us to bring new ideas and innovation to a stable, credible pillar in the US market,” he said.

In 2017, one of the biotech company’s co-founders, Dr David Wood received a $100,000 Advance Queensland Founders’ Fellowship which allowed Dr Wood to take time out of the research lab to work on the commercial component of the product.

“The success that companies such as Microba are achieving, and the jobs they are creating since receiving that early-stage funding boost from the Palaszczuk Government is the proof in the pudding that the Advance Queensland initiative is working to grow the Queensland economy,” Ms Jones said.