Leucine Rich Bio - what a journey!

 

I feel nostalgic and proud of the journey that we started 8 years ago with the very humble and passionate team at Leucine rich Bio. I remember starting out with a basic computer and few exceptional colleagues with a vision to bring in a new paradigm shift in life science and healthcare domains.

 

The first few years went by doing research projects with marquee institutes, companies and universities from across the world. Our strength lied in the cross-sectional abilities of systems biology, bioinformatics, molecular biology. We completed complicated genomics projects for our esteemed clients and in turn gained lot of insights into the various domains. In Parallel, we started building the base of the hitherto new concept called the “microbiome”. This was 2016 and microbiome was a very new concept with a handful of companies in the world. We created patent pending algorithms, in-house curated databases and decision engines and set out on a mission to bring this new science to this region (South Asia). Initial few months went into beta testing of the product. We got lot of feedback on the report. As this was first of its kind report, we did not have a yardstick to compare our report with, so we started putting “actionable” information as per the feedback of the people. This is how “BugSpeaks”, South Asia’s first gut microbiome test was launched. It was a challenge to say the least to bring in a nascent field to India and create awareness among the stake holders. Also, challenging was the cost factor as the technology that we were using, next generation sequencing was quite expensive. However, we got the support of visionary family house investors (Omphalos ventures, Bengaluru) who believed in our vision and supported us all the way till today.

 

Covid19 stuck us all. But we tried to utilize the downtime by doing research and our first research review paper was published in a peer reviewed scientific journal, Virus Research. This was the first paper to suggest the possible link of SARS-Cov-2 virus with the gut microbiota. This opened lot of scientific collaborations and joint research work. In fact, Leucine Rich Bio is partnering with various companies/Institutes in clinical trials addressing the gut/oral microbiota.

We have also started our own clinical trial on efficacy of Bugspeaks (patient recruitment over and intervention is ongoing) and few more trials are on the anvil.

 Along the way, we started getting feedback about the report and that led us to develop South Asia’s first gut microbiome data-based nutraceutical product line called “Rychbiome”. Our first product is a synbiotic called “Rychbiome Indus” which was derived using Indian gut microbiome data (internal). We hope to bring in new products in this category addressing various conditions as we move along.

 

The feather on our cap was when we were declared the National start up winner (2021) by Government of India in the life science category, sub category – wellness in a highly competitive background. We were recently invited by the national broadcaster, Doordarshan for the series “startupchampions 2.0”. We have started exporting BugSpeaks to Thailand and export to a few more countries are in the pipeline.

 

Now, “microbiome” has become a buzz word in the industry. We feel proud of the fact that we have been a pioneer and a trendsetter. With frugal means we could achieve a lot and we envision to see Leucine Rich Bio and its products BugSpeaks and Rychbiome scale new heights. There are a lot of products and new applications of the microbiome that we have planned for. These last 8 years were full of learnings, sacrifices, test of patience and perseverance. We thank all our clients, investors, partners and well wishers for their support. A big THANK YOU!