New Startup Vedanta Harnesses Microbial Activities to Boost Healthy Immune Function
Summary
Vedanta Biosciences, a newly formed startup in Boston, is emerging from top-secret status to reveal its goal of developing treatments based on the relationships between microbes and our immune system.Vedanta is now coming out of stealth mode as a paper co-authored by one of the firm’s major scientific contributors, Kenya Honda of the University of Tokyo, is being released today in the journal Science.The paper explains the discovery, which Vedanta is working to commercialize, of how a class of bacteria or “Good Clostridia” in the gut might prevent the immune system from going awry and causing inflammation, according to the startup.Their study found that the bacteria help recruit regulatory T cells to the gut whose job is to prevent such ailments caused by unchecked immune responses.“We’re in the process of now prioritizing the [health] conditions we want to go after.” The startup, which is incubating in PureTech’s Boston office, appears to be tapping a highly energized field that is rapidly providing clues about why allergies and autoimmune diseases have been on the rise in the U.S. and other developed countries.