Kanvas Biosciences Receives Gates Foundation Grant to Study Synthetic Microbiome Therapy for Childhood Gut Disorder

Kanvas Biosciences received new funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a treatment for environmental enteric dysfunction, a disease that puts around 150 million children worldwide at risk. Environmental enteric dysfunction causes severe gut inflammation that prevents nutrient absorption from food.

There is no approved medicine for the condition, though gut inflammation underlying it is usually the result of chronic infections from bacteria like E. Coli. Matthew Cheng, cofounder and CEO of Kanvas Biosciences, said the company has built a "Google Maps" for the microbiome using machine learning and spatial imagery.

The technology can get 145 different bacterial strains into a single pill, compared with other microbiome treatments that contain fewer than a dozen bacterial strains.

Kanvas Biosciences microbiome pill treatment is designed with pregnant women in mind. The approach would introduce healthy microbes that displace pathogenic ones, with the goal of healing mothers and providing a healthy microbiome for their unborn infants. The company was founded in 2020.

It does not have any FDA-approved microbiome treatments on the market but has one microbiome treatment currently in clinical trials and another entering clinical trials later in 2026. "We think we have a really high chance of solving this problem. Or at least being part of the solution," Matthew Cheng stated.

Jason Pontin, a general partner at DCVC, invests in emerging tech startups focused on health, industrial transformation and sustainability such as Kanvas, Alacrity and ZwitterCo. He highlighted advances in microscopes that spatially visualize the human microbiome and automated manufacturing that can synthesize microbes in pill format.