Astarte Medical Announces Issuance of U.S. Patent Covering A Digital Gut Health Diagnostic - the Microbiome and Gut Inflammation (MAGI) Score

YARDLEY, Pa., Oct. 20, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Astarte Medical, a precision nutrition company focused on delivering digital tools and diagnostics to improve outcomes in the first 1000 days of life, announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued U.S. Patent No. 10,811,126 "System and Methods for Developing and Using a Microbiome-based Action Component for Patient Health" which uses methods relating to the use of biodemographic, clinical and microbial health risk factors incorporated into a score, identifying the risk of gut inflammatory response. 

The patent covers a graphical user interface identifying the state of a patient's microbiome and risk of inflammation based on non-modifiable and modifiable neonatal and perinatal risk factors, as well as markers of inflammation. These factors are incorporated to calculate the Microbiome and Gut Inflammation, or MAGI score, a weighted measure across the various factors with the weight corresponding to each factor's contribution to the score.  Factors include but are not limited to, maternal health, mode of birth, diet, antibiotic exposure, and molecular markers of inflammation.  The patent also allows for a selection of a protocol guiding microbial interventions for MAGI scores corresponding to low, medium, or high levels of risk.

"The issuance of this foundational patent supports our vision of creating AI-driven solutions that create a standard measure of the state of the gut to help direct clinicians or consumers how best to manipulate the gut in support of precision health," said Tracy Warren, co-founder and CEO of Astarte Medical and co-inventor on the patent. "At Astarte Medical, we are focusing our efforts on tools enabling precision nutrition in the first 1000 days of life, from conception to age 2, but this approach to quantifying gut health is applicable throughout the lifespan."

Warren's co-inventors include Tammi Jantzen, co-founder and CFO of Astarte Medical, and Katherine Gregory, PhD, RN, the company's scientific co-founder and Associate Chief Nursing Officer of Maternal and Infant Health at Brigham and Women's Hospital.  The newly allowed patent is co-owned by Astarte Medical and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Brigham and Women's Hospital's rights in the allowed patent are exclusively licensed to Astarte Medical for commercialization of MAGI, which is a part of the company's NICUbiome^TM platform for quantifying gut health in preterm infants. 

"We know that the microbiome plays an important role in immune-mediated health outcomes across the lifespan. We also know that factors unique to early life appear to have an impact on health outcomes across the lifespan, possibly via their influence on the microbiome. However, we don't know enough about how to optimize early life exposures and the microbiome to ensure lifelong health. Clinical teams need a new generation of evidence-based tools to develop this knowledge and impact the care and nutrition we provide for preterm infants in particular," says Gregory, a former newborn ICU nurse and Harvard researcher in early life nutrition and microbiome.

Astarte Medical has several additional patents pending as it seeks to create an expansive portfolio of real-world data tools for improving health for generations to come.    

About Astarte Medical

Astarte Medical is a precision nutrition company using software and predictive analytics to improve outcomes during the first 1,000 days of life. With an initial focus on preterm infants, Astarte Medical supports feeding protocols, clinical practice, and decision-making in the neonatal ICU with a suite of digital tools and diagnostics designed to standardize feeding, optimize nutrition and quantify gut health. For more information, please visit astartemedical.com.

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SOURCE Astarte Medical