Seed Health Launches Computational Biology Platform, Powered by Most Comprehensive Host-Microbiome Data Set, to Expand Pipeline Beyond the Gut

Seed Health today launched CODA, a computational biology platform for the discovery and development of next-generation precision probiotics and microbiome-directed interventions. The platform is powered by the Human Phenotype Project—the world’s most comprehensive multi-omics data set, emerging from the lab of computational biologist Professor Eran Segal, Ph.D., at the Weizmann Institute of Science. CODA elucidates previously unknown connections between the microbiome and health to develop targeted, outcome-specific interventions. First programs include cardiometabolic health, brain health, menopause, and longevity.

CODA’s dataset integrates over three million phenotypic data points from more than 13,000 individuals across 40,000 cumulative subject years, combining microbiome analysis with genetic, immune, metabolomic, and proteomic data. This multidimensional approach captures the diversity of human health factors, including biological, environmental, and dietary influences, lifestyles, and medical histories, to clarify critical interactions between the microbiome and host health and reveal unique insights into the mechanisms underlying health and disease.

“Our CODA platform is tracking the health data of tens of thousands of individuals over decades, offering a comprehensive, multi-omics perspective,” explained Raja Dhir, Co-Founder of Seed Health. “This allows us to uncover and address critical connections between the microbiome and health, enabling the creation of targeted interventions to improve outcomes across diverse populations.”

CODA enhances Seed Health’s full-stack platform, bolstering the company’s computational microbiome capabilities across various microbiomes of the body and strengthening Seed’s capacity to propel microbiome science from discovery to real-world impact.

The Next Frontier of Microbiome Science

CODA’s combinatorial dataset unlocks a new level of insight into the microbiome’s complex interactions with key biological systems, including the gut-brain, gut-heart, gut-liver, gut-skin, and gut-eye axes. This has enabled the groundbreaking development of organ-specific clocks, revealing the diverse aging rates of different organs within the same individual. Such insights reveal a clear distinction between biological and chronological age, offering a more comprehensive understanding of health and disease patterns. Notably, the microbiome clock emerged as a key predictor of biological health across multiple organ systems, highlighting its critical role as an interventional target for enhancing human health.

“Our development of organ-specific clocks has revealed the microbiome’s extraordinary capacity not just to predict but to actively shape health outcomes across key biological systems,” said Prof. Segal. “CODA empowers the transition from insight to action, enabling the creation of interventions that target health outcomes across these different organ systems to support lifelong health.”

The CODA platform utilizes microbial genomics to identify specific bacterial genes and employs network effect analysis to understand these microbes within their ecosystems, many of which have not been previously discovered or even named in existing microbiome databases. This comprehensive approach is powered by advanced AI and ML algorithms, capable of processing immense amounts of data, including 200TB of human data from The Human Phenotype Project.

First programs include:

• Metabolic Health: CODA’s method for microbial gene-based analysis was recently featured in Nature Medicine. The study, led by Prof. Segal, reported a direct correlation between variations in microbial genes and body weight and composition (based on 3,500 unique DEXA scans). A second study from the group, published in Nature Communications, revealed how diet modifies metabolic parameters through microbiome modulation, highlighting a causal relationship. CODA is translating these groundbreaking discoveries into consumer health products.
• Brain Health: CODA investigates the crucial links between the gut-brain and gut-eye axes, illuminating how dietary compounds interact with the microbiome to impact brain health. Early findings underscore the significant role of microbial metabolites in brain development and function, setting the stage for microbiome-targeted interventions to enhance neurocognitive health.
• Longevity: CODA provides unprecedented insight into the distinction between biological and chronological age, focusing on organ-specific functions and sex differences. Using this insight, Seed will develop targeted interventions to support immediate health, as well as long-term well-being and longevity.
• Menopause: CODA’s menopause program is grounded in the discovery of a significant acceleration in Biological Age (BA) during menopause, providing a strong signal for targeted intervention. This initiative will develop innovative solutions to mitigate menopause-induced symptoms and age acceleration.

“CODA enables the development of next-generation precision probiotics in a uniquely powerful way,” said Dirk Gevers, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Seed Health. “Rather than relying on a few biomarkers in isolation, CODA empowers us to examine them within a network of hundreds of other biological data points. This comprehensive approach allows us to unravel the complex interactions between diet, supplementation, the microbiome, and multi-system human health more effectively than before.”

“CODA significantly expands our platform’s capacity to realize the full promise of the microbiome,” said Ara Katz, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Seed Health. “With a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the microbiome’s role in human health, we are better positioned to translate these breakthrough research findings into interventions that have a meaningful impact on human health globally.”