Posted on 03/19/2021 8:39:24 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The SEC charged Jessica Richman and Zachary Apte, the co-founders of the poop-testing startup uBiome, with defrauding investors out of $60 million through misleading statements and false representations of the company’s prospects. [T]he charges stem from a 2018 Series C round valuing the company that once appointed ex-Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez to its board at nearly $600 million.
Regulators submitted their filing in federal court in San Francisco, and are seeking to bar Richman and Apte from serving in future officer and director positions. Thursday’s indictment describes Richman and Apte as fugitives...
Founded way back in 2012, uBiome burst onto the scene with a pledge to crowdsource the sequencing and mapping of the human microbiome — the bacterial ecosystem inside the gut that some scientists say has wide-ranging impacts on one’s health. The company pitched itself as the next 23andMe, offering to analyze stool samples and return health-related advice.
By the time its Indiegogo funding page closed in February 2013, uBiome had raised over $350,000. The company also recruited several notable scientists over the years, including geneticist George Church to its scientific advisory board.
uBiome eventually expanded their products to include vaginal health and STDs women face. And to ostensibly beef up a drug R&D plan, the company added Jimenez to its board in 2018, despite a scandal where Jimenez paid former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen a $1.2 million contract.
But the house of cards began to crumble when some researchers sounded alarms that the science behind the company didn’t all add up. They said that, like when 23andMe first started, there simply hadn’t been enough research into the microbiome to offer sweeping health advice based on a stool sample. 23andMe, after facing its own criticism, eventually gained FDA approval for several of its services.
(Excerpt) Read more at endpts.com ...
"What's all this? Why are people sending us their poop? What did we do to them?"
E-Staff Meeting. “Holmes tested blood. What can we test?”
“Saliva?”
“Nah, too boring. I know! Poop!”
You are right, of course. The gut works synergistically with the immune system in a big way, too.
I am sure that in the biomic field, a valid movement will eventually pass.
What kind of shit are they pulling?
Poop testing and the suit was filed in San Francisco. What better place?
What a poopy thing to do!
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