Biobot Analytics Raises $6.7 Million in Seed Funding to Transform Wastewater Infrastructure into Public Health Observatories
Summary
Using anonymous data collected from sewage, Biobot’s platform can trace health indicators that provide insights into drug use, the presence of viruses, environmental contaminants and nutrition. We are deploying our technology to do the same at the population level, which is tremendously valuable to government and private sector partners and will be core to public health improvement and the development of smart cities,” said Mariana Matus, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Biobot Analytics. The company’s analysis gave local officials accurate information on the use of opioids, so they could better lead productive interventions, reducing overdoses by 40% and lowering their associated cost to the healthcare system. The team has shown the potential of using our wastewater systems for mitigating the opioid crisis and now is the time to extend the approach to addressing other important health challenges, from COVID-19 and other viruses to environmental contaminants,” said Ann DeWitt, general partner, of The Engine. In March, in collaboration with researchers at MIT, Harvard and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Biobot launched a campaign to solicit wastewater from facilities across the U.S. Its research protocol and findings from an initial review of samples from a large urban facility in MA were detailed in the academic paper which can be found on MedRxiv called “SARS-COV-2 titers in wastewater are higher than expected from clinically confirmed cases.” Findings indicate that COVID-19 prevalence is orders of magnitude higher than confirmed cases suggest.