DayTwo Secures $12.0 Million Series A Financing Round

TEL AVIV, Israel and SAN FRANCISCO, June 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- DayTwo, a leader in microbiome-health management, announced today it has completed a $12.0 million Series A round of financing through Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. (JJDC), Seventure Partners' Health for Life Capital fund, Mayo Clinic, co-founder Marius Nacht, and other private investors.

The investment brings DayTwo's total funding to $17.0 million, and will help the company to broaden and deepen its lead in evidence-based, clinically proven and actionable science of the gut microbiome. Proceeds from the financing will be used to expand the company's product, engineering, and data science teams in Tel Aviv, Israel and San Francisco, California.  In addition, DayTwo will deepen its clinical research with the Mayo Clinic and other gut-microbiome clinical research partners.

The Series A financing builds on an exceptional year for DayTwo, which saw a rapid growth in customers, key executive appointments, and market momentum in the areas of gut-microbiome-science, personalized nutrition, and diabetes and prediabetes management.

DayTwo is the first company to develop a method to accurately predict an individual's glycemic response to specific foods and food combinations using an individual's microbiome and other clinical factors.  This evidence-based approach to nutrition is what enables DayTwo to bring personalized nutrition to market, and make personalized nutrition a reality for millions of people today.

"This ability to go beyond the informational offerings in the market, which are neither evidence-based, clinically proven, or actionable, makes DayTwo different and special.  DayTwo will help people act upon a healthier, personalized diet, based on accurately predicting postprandial glycemic response," said Nicholas Chia, professor of Biophysics & Microbiome at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

The DayTwo approach to health and nutrition recognizes that every individual has a unique gut microbiome and may respond very differently to the same food or food combinations.  Day Two is currently the only offering in the market that can bring a personalized diet and nutrition plan to individuals, based on accurately predicting their own glycemic response. As postprandial glycemic response (post-meal blood sugar) is an independent risk factor for multiple diseases and affects weight gain and fat storage, maintaining normal blood glucose levels requires a nutrition plan that is tailored to the individual. DayTwo's science is the only offering of its kind in the marketplace today.

DayTwo's personalized nutrition offering is based on the original research led by Professors Eran Segal and Eran Elinav from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and published in the scientific journal Cell. Segal and Elinav found that by profiling an individual's gut microbiome and leveraging machine learning, they can accurately predict an individual's post-meal blood sugar response for unique foods and food combinations. This scientific and machine learning breakthrough has made personalized nutrition a reality today, and enables DayTwo to fulfill its mission to improve the health and wellbeing of millions, including diabetics and prediabetics, worldwide.

For consumers, DayTwo offers a cloud-based, first-of-its-kind, proprietary diet and nutrition planner, that enables individuals to get personalized scores for specific foods and food combinations based on their own gut-microbiome profile and other personal parameters.

For clinicians and health practitioners, DayTwo brings actionable insights for diet and nutrition to the care plans and meal plans of their patients; brings ease and convenience to adherence to a healthy diet; and provides an additional path for clinicians and their patients to stay connected. For nutrition, microbiome, weight-management, and meal planning businesses, DayTwo offers an API to access the DayTwo platform-as-a-service to provide predictive glycemic response scores for specific foods and food combinations.

"We've just scratched the surface of how powerful the microbiome is to support personalized diet, nutrition, and chronic condition management, to enable our customers to have the ability to live a full, happy and healthy lifestyle," says DayTwo Chief Executive Officer Lihi Segal.  "DayTwo has brought actionable, evidence-based science down to a mobile app, to make personalized nutrition easy and convenient for the first time. This enables DayTwo to impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people who struggle with diet and nutrition-related health risks every day," added Segal.  "Having the financial support and domain expertise of JJDC, Seventure, co-founder Marius Nacht and our Israeli private equity investor group will enable us to execute our vision even more rapidly and broadly – with consumers, practitioners, health centers, and medical device partners."

Isabelle de Cremoux, CEO and Managing partner of Seventure Partners, added "Our investment in DayTwo fits very well into the focus of Health for Life Capital, as DayTwo acts on precise knowledge of an individual's microbiome.  DayTwo is positioned at the interface between nutrition and health, with an easy-to-use app which provides precisely tailored advice for each individual's dietary needs."

About DayTwo
DayTwo provides personalized nutrition and actionable insights that allow consumers to live healthier and maintain normal blood sugar levels. DayTwo does this through DNA sequencing of the gut microbiome – the vast collection of bacteria, which is as unique to each individual as their fingerprints. DayTwo leverages the scientific and evidence-based understanding of the microbiome so consumers may take practical and immediate steps to improve their own health and wellbeing. The DayTwo service is based on six years of clinical research conducted by Professors Eran Segal and Eran Elinav from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Prof. Segal's and Prof. Elinav's research has been funded solely by the Weizmann Institute of Science and upon its completion, the research technology was licensed exclusively to DayTwo.  The clinical research results on which our product and service is based have been published in the Nature, The Cell, Cell Metabolism, and a Research Video that can be found at https://www.daytwo.com/microbiomeandnutrition/theresearch.  To learn more about DayTwo, visit http://www.daytwo.com.

About Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc.
Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. is the venture capital subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that has been investing since 1973 in the medical device, diagnostic, pharmaceutical, and consumer health areas. JJDC's goal is to create opportunities that meet the strategic needs of its operating affiliates while providing visibility to innovative emerging technology, businesses and business models. JJDC invests in companies across the continuum from early stage seed investments to advanced stages of series venture management. For more information, please visit www.jjdc.com.

About Seventure Partners
With over €660m in assets under management as of the end of 2016, Seventure Partners is a leading venture capital firm in Europe. Since 1997, Seventure Partners has invested in innovative businesses with high growth potential in two fields: Digital technologies in France and Germany, and Life sciences across Europe, Israel and North America. In Life sciences, the four areas of focus include biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, connected health and medtech, industrial biotechnology, and last but not least: the MICROBIOME, nutrition, foodtech and personalized medicine. Investments can range between €500k and €10m per round, or up to €20m per company, from early to late stage. Recently, Seventure Partners successfully launched Health for Life Capital™ which has attracted strategic investments from prestigious organizations including Danone, Tereos, Tornier, Lesaffre, Bel and Novartis, as well as entrepreneurs and financial institutions. Seventure is a subsidiary of Natixis Global Asset Management. Natixis is the corporate investment management and financial services arm of Groupe BPCE, the second-largest French bank. For more details: www.seventure.com / Twitter @SeventureP

SOURCE DayTwo