Jona – a technology company on a mission to reveal the relationship between the microbiome and health – recently launched with $5 million in funding led by Breyer Capital and Meridian Street Capital. Consumers and providers can now purchase and use Jona’s at-home microbiome profiling kit – which uses AI to analyze an individual’s microbiome and deliver actionable insights that empower individuals to take a more proactive approach to their health in an era of rising chronic illness.
There are 60-70 million Americans are affected by GI disorders (NIH research). And the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA) reports that as many as 50 million Americans are living with an autoimmune disease costing billions of healthcare spending each year. Many of people struggle to find a diagnosis, relieve symptoms, and find effective therapies. And Jona’s platform aims to equip these individuals with the latest scientific knowledge to discover root causes and develop effective treatment plans.
Jona was founded by Leo Grady, PhD, who is internationally recognized for his work to deliver AI in healthcare for nearly 20 years at pioneering Bay Area startups (HeartFlow), multinational medical companies (Siemens) and, as CEO of Paige.ai. And he has built FDA approved AI applications for many areas of medicine, including radiology, cardiology and pathology that are now incorporated into standard care.
Jona developed a proprietary Large Language Model (LLM) to interpret an individual’s gut microbiome and generate a personalized summary of the entire scientific literature based on their unique microbiome profile. And the first product is an easy at-home microbiome profiling kit that sequences the microbes in an individual’s gut microbiome. Jona uses this LLM to generate a personalized interactive report with associations to conditions, symptoms, food sensitivities and produces actionable insights on food, diet and lifestyle modifications based on their health goals.
Using Jona, providers can now keep up with and take action on all the latest science as they treat their patients more comprehensively. For consumers, Jona enables accessibility to the latest science on their personal gut microbiome to understand how the microbiome relates to their health and the concrete actions they can take to improve.
Jona believes fully realizing the microbiome in medicine is going to create whole new diagnostics, change patient pathways, develop new therapeutic classes, change nutrition, and extend human longevity.
KEY QUOTES:
“I’m thrilled to once again partner with Leo Grady, an incredible operator whose career has been built on finding effective ways to merge AI and healthcare. We believe that Jona has enormous potential to directly impact patient care. With its innovative use of LLMs and some of the most advanced applications of generative AI we’ve seen, the company will change how we think about the microbiome and the future of human health.”
— Jim Breyer, CEO and Founder of Breyer Capital
“My family members suffer from chronic conditions like Crohn’s, colitis and celiac disease. They’ve all had their microbiome tested in hopes of finding relief, but the results showed arbitrary scores that were not justified with science and seemed designed to sell supplements. It was frustrating because I knew that microbiome science was advancing rapidly and I saw the opportunity for AI to make the microbiome literature more accessible, interpretable and transparent for consumers and providers. Launching this company is a culmination of my lived experiences and a lifelong career in artificial intelligence and healthcare.”
— Leo Grady, PhD, CEO and Founder of Jona
“The research on the microbiome is moving fast toward unraveling its critical role in human health. For example, we find that GI issues, chronic conditions like autoimmune diseases, obesity, and neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease show characteristic microbiome profiles. Even sports performance and motivation are potentially related to the microbiome, or how you respond to therapies. One thing is clear: deeply understanding the microbiome will revolutionize healthcare, leading to new diagnostics and treatments, possibly even cures. Microbiome medicine is really the new frontier of health, and Jona is well positioned to lead the charge.”
— Jonas Schluter, PhD, Chief Scientific Advisor at Jona and Assistant Professor at NYU Langone
