Microbiome therapeutics keep getting written off, and then quietly keep raising money.
This week, two of them did it on the same news cycle.
EnteroBiotix, the Glasgow-based outfit working on full-spectrum oral microbiome therapy, closed a £19 million round to push its lead asset EBX-102-02 into a Phase 2b trial called RISE for IBS with constipation.
Their first dosing is set for Q2 2026, topline data is expected in the back half of 2027.
Who’s investing in “bacteria”? Thairm Bio and the Scottish National Investment Bank led the round.
And then on the very same day, Munich’s mbiomics announced the third closing of its Series A, bringing the total to €30 million. MIG Fonds and Bayern Kapital came back in.
Here, the capital goes toward IND-enabling work and GMP scale-up for MBX-116, an oral live biotherapeutic the company is positioning as a checkpoint inhibitor co-therapy in second-line advanced melanoma.
Two companies, two VERY DIFFERENT indications, one category that has been declared dead more times than anyone bothered to count.
And just in case people are still skeptical of the modality as a whole, EnteroBiotix is bringing receipts.
Their Phase 2a TrIuMPH trial, which read out in January, hit a 59% response rate on EBX-102-02 against 44% on placebo across 122 IBS patients. That’s a 15-point delta in a disease where the pharmacological tools have, frankly, been pretty grim for decades.
EnteroBiotix Phase 2a TrIuMPH: response rate
59%
44%
Source: EnteroBiotix Phase 2a TrIuMPH, n=122, Jan 2026
The idea behind mbiomics is wildly different.
They’re not chasing a GI indication where the microbiome story is biologically obvious. They’re going after melanoma, banking on the now well-documented finding that gut composition shapes how patients respond to checkpoint blockade…
We will definitely be talking about this on the show today, so be sure to tune in – Episode #3 on YouTube if you’re reading this after the fact.
If MBX-116 can move the needle on second-line melanoma response rates by even a few percentage points, that’s a real shot.
Phase 2a data in IBS.
Preclinical work in melanoma.
€30M from German LP capital, £19M from Scottish capital.
The “bacteria as a therapeutic” category isn’t necessarily “booming”, but it isn’t quitting either. And both of these companies now have the runway to find out if oral bacterial consortia can shift outcomes in patient populations where the existing standard of care is mediocre.
You can almost feel the industry holding its breath, again, on whether 2027 is the year microbiome therapeutics finally graduate.
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