Alba Health, a Danish-Swedish start-up dedicated to providing digital gut health support for children, announced today that it has secured $2 million in pre-seed funding, in a round led by Voima Ventures, including Octopus Ventures, Noaber, Bust VC, Joyance Partners, and the cofounders of Oura. This follows financial support of $500,000 by the BioInnovation Institute, a Novo Nordisk Foundation initiative, bringing the total financing of Alba Health to $2.5 million in 2023.
Founded in 2022 by former BCG manager, Eleonora Cavani, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus Willem M de Vos, Alba Health is driven by the insight that gut health in the first years of life is linked to common child symptoms such as colic and sleep disruption, as well as chronic conditions in later life like allergies, asthma, obesity, and diabetes.
In 2020, Forbes reported how Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are betting on microbiome science as the next revolution in medicine and health, and in the past 15 years, research projects on the human microbiome reached an unprecedented scale, leading to the first two microbiome-based drugs approved by FDA in the past six months.
“I have severe allergies and eczema and I know that lifestyle, in particular diet, strongly affects my symptoms,” shares Cavani with me. “So, I started to research why chronic conditions start and what it would take to stop them for good. With Alba Health, we are pursuing our vision to empower families in achieving a healthy lifestyle, whilst collecting anonymized data to advance chronic disease prevention.”
A recent survey of European and American parents, conducted by Alba Health, confirmed that over 80% of parents would like to have access to a greater amount of science-driven advice on lifestyle and nutrition for their children. “In our research, we have found that over 50% of babies experienced gut symptoms, over 20% had colic, and 40% of school-aged children had allergies. “These symptoms often remain unresolved – causing extreme distress in both parents and the children suffering from such symptoms,” explains Cavani.
“There hasn’t been much innovation in child health and that simply doesn’t make sense! Symptoms linked to the gut often lead to crying and sleep disruption, which are incredibly stressful for parents. At the same time, chronic diseases affect 40% of school-aged kids in the U.S. We must act now to advance chronic disease prevention for our generation and those to come,” she adds.
“We still don’t know so much about the gut microbiome. But we have scientific support for the fact that microbial colonization in early life may affect later-life health outcomes. At Alba Health, we start from established science and conduct targeted studies with university partners to support parents with evidence,” explains scientific co-founder, Prof. de Vos – a key opinion leader in microbiome science with over 800 publications.
With a commitment to invest in strong scientific foundations, Alba Health has established a research collaboration with the University of Helsinki’s Health and Early Life Microbiota (HELMi) cohort, which stands as one of the world’s leading early life microbiome and child health studies. The HELMi study followed 1,000 children for six years, collecting over 10,000 microbiome samples and 50,000 data points on lifestyle and health outcomes (Cavani highlighted that the collaboration doesn’t involve the processing of personal data from the HELMI cohort by Alba Health).
“Alba Health’s science-based approach makes it possible for them to bring real unique value to parents and help them ensure a healthy development of their baby towards good wellbeing and health in the long run,” shared Petteri Lahtela, cofounder of Oura, and one of the investors in this round.
Jussi Sainiemi, Partner at Voima Ventures, added how the interest in babies’ gut health has increased significantly during recent years but the domain is lacking solutions that are backed by science. “We are excited about Alba Health’s unique approach to improve the life quality of newborns and their parents and exceptionally strong team combining the commercial and academic backgrounds.”
Both Alba Health’s cofounders shared how capital the company raised in this round will be used to launch the company’s primary product: digital gut health support for children based on AI and gut microbiome testing. “With Alba Health, our aim is for parents to be able to order a gut microbiome test specifically developed for children and receive personalized diet recommendations to optimize health and, in the long term, reduce health risks,” concluded Cavani.
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