Episode #60: Meet the Start-up Focused on Microbe-tech

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  Samantha Herrick:
  Ever wondered what it was like to design products using microbes? Let’s find out.

  Cheri Ackerman:
  In the long term, we’re super excited about being a company that catalyzes people having access to products that use microbes to our benefit in a way that just hasn’t been possible before.

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Let’s stop trying to reject the things that exist at a very molecular, microbial, biological level, and instead ask how we can leverage them to get outcomes that we want.

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Starting to build medicine that is based on ecosystems.

  Samantha Herrick:
  Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. This is The Tech Optimist. Today, we have a Meet the Startup episode for you, and the startup we’re going to talk to is Concerto Biosciences.

  Behind the ball for AV is Drew Wandzilak, Senior Associate here at Alumni Ventures. You know him, you love him. Our guest is Cheri Ackerman, co-founder and CEO of Concerto Biosciences. And now you know me—my name is Sam. I’m the guide, editor, and narrative savant for the show. I’ll help guide you through this episode.

  A little bit about Concerto: Being present within the biotech mecca of the northeast in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Concerto Biosciences has a really cool tagline: Microbes, like humans, are stronger together than they could ever be alone.

  I’m not going to spoil too much of their technology, but essentially what they do is produce arrays of microbes and combine many of them together in millions—even trillions—of different combinations. They test these combinations to see if they can assist in product development for areas such as skincare, women’s health, agriculture, oral and gut health, animal health, and even the built environment.

  Drew does a great job of walking Cheri through their technology, and I’ll bring in some fascinating facts along the way. Let’s hop into the episode. Enjoy.

  As a reminder, The Tech Optimist podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not personalized advice, and it’s not an offer to buy or sell securities. For additional important details, please see the text description accompanying this episode.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Fantastic. Okay, great. That was awesome. Let’s jump into the bulk of the conversation here. Starting off, introduce yourself, introduce the company, and we’ll go from there.

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Sure. My name is Cheri Ackerman. I’m the CEO and one of the co-founders of Concerto Biosciences. My background is pretty scientific—I did a PhD in chemistry at UC Berkeley and then came to MIT to do a postdoc in biological engineering. I worked with Paul Blainey’s group at the Broad Institute, and Concerto ultimately flowed out of technology that we invented while we were there, myself and my co-founding team.

  What we do as a company is try to make it possible to tap into the microbial world. We think this is one of the most under-accessed natural resources in the world around us. Microbes are literally everywhere. They grow on every surface, including our bodies, plants, soil, and even buildings.

  Yet, when you go to the store, what products can we actually use to change the microbes around us in a way that benefits us? Honestly, not very many. Most of the technologies we have are designed to kill microbes—things like antibiotics, bleach, soap, and hand sanitizer.

  This begs the question: Why? Why is it so hard to harness microbes that are literally everywhere and are known to shape our immune system, nutrition, and the types of infections we do or don’t get?

  We’d argue that a big reason is that while microbes live in very complex ecosystems in real life, we tend to study them in the lab one by one. That gives us incomplete information about how microbes actually work.

  When people develop products based on lab research and try to move them into the real world, those products often fail. Then people say, “Oh, the microbiome doesn’t work,” or, “Synthetic biology is really hard.” Yes, it’s hard—but part of the reason is because we don’t understand how microbial ecosystems function.

  The technology we spun out from MIT and the Broad Institute is called kChip. It lets us take a library of different microbes, mix and match them, and test all the different combinations—on the order of tens of millions to hundreds of millions at a time. That’s the scale you need to truly explore what we call combinatorial space, where you have countless possible microbial combinations.

  With that kind of data, you can apply AI to model how a microbial ecosystem actually functions. If we can measure maybe 10% of how it works, we can use those models to infer the rest.

  Once we understand an ecosystem, we can build products that take advantage of that understanding. For example, we’ve been working on atopic dermatitis, more commonly known as eczema. It’s a condition with many contributing factors, but research shows the skin microbiome plays a role. A microbe called staph aureus grows on the skin’s surface, and when it gets out of control, it degrades the skin barrier and can trigger eczema flares.

  We figured out how the skin microbiome influences staph aureus. We found a combination of three microbes that, when applied to a skin model, pacify staph aureus and keep it under control. Now, we’re starting a clinical trial to put these microbes on people with atopic dermatitis to see if they also control staph aureus in real patients—and whether that helps improve the condition.

  Cheri Ackerman:
  We also have a product that we’re working on for recurrent vaginal yeast infections. A one-off vaginal yeast infection—no big deal. Take fluconazole, it goes away. But there are about a million and a half women in the US who get four or more yeast infections a year. They end up on these azole drugs all the time, which have nasty side effects. You can’t use them if you’re trying to get pregnant or if you are pregnant. We feel like there’s a lot of white space here, especially because microbes are so clearly the underlying problem in this situation.

  If we could rebalance the vaginal microflora in a way that keeps Candida under control, that would be a very viable solution. You can imagine tons of different applications across cosmetics, food ingredients, and agriculture—all different kinds of areas. In the long term, we’re super excited about being a company that catalyzes people having access to products that use microbes to our benefit in a way that just hasn’t been possible before.

   

  Samantha Herrick:
  All right, here’s my first interjection for this episode. Cheri has already done a great job of explaining what microbes are and how they are a part of our everyday lives—how they live with us, how they live on us, and how they affect our bodies in general. But I want to share a bit more information on microbes.

  There are several different types of microbes: bacteria, fungi, viruses, protozoa, algae, archaea, and prions. Now, why are they important? We’ll get into this in more detail later, but here’s a quick overview:

  • Ecosystem functioning: Microbes contribute to nutrient cycling, decomposition, and energy flow within ecosystems.

  • Human health: The human body hosts trillions of microbes that aid in digestion, protect against pathogens, and support immune function. The balance of these microbial communities is crucial for maintaining health—as we’ll learn more about in this episode.

  • Biotechnology: Microbes are used in various industries for fermentation (e.g., bread and beer production), bioremediation (cleaning up pollutants), and even pharmaceuticals like antibiotics.

  All right, we’re going to take a quick break for an ad, and then I promise we’ll be right back into the interview.

   

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  Drew Wandzilak:
  Tremendously helpful. We’ll get back to clinical trials and the combinatorial space and all the great things you just mentioned. But to make things very real and simple—maybe at the risk of losing some important nuance here—why microbial ecosystems? Perhaps we can look at this through the lens of eczema or whichever example makes the most sense. How do your approaches differ from our existing ways of treating these conditions, and why is it important?

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Sure. I’ll use atopic dermatitis as a very concrete example. A lot of factors contribute to eczema, including the degradation of the skin barrier and an overactive immune system. One of the interesting things about the immune system is that it’s always interfacing with our external world—and our external world is covered in microbes.

  Understanding which microbes contribute to positive versus negative immune responses—and creating a microbial environment that helps the immune system calm down—has been the holy grail for microbial science for a while now.

  The angle that Concerto is taking isn’t necessarily trying to interface directly with the immune system—that’s still very complex science. Instead, we chose to target a specific microbe that’s been shown to trigger flares.

  Right now, your options for addressing this component of atopic dermatitis are to take an antibiotic or apply a topical antibiotic to the skin. But you can’t use antibiotics for more than a couple of weeks—they disrupt your gut microbiome and the rest of your skin microbiome, so it’s not a sustainable solution. Plus, if you just knock out staph aureus with antibiotics and then stop treatment, you’ve left a huge ecological niche. Guess who grows back the fastest to fill that niche? Staph aureus.

  Antibiotics are great for treating acute infections, but they’re really bad for chronic microbial imbalances. In those cases, you need something that can reclaim that niche and shift the way the microbiome works.

  What we’re developing is very complementary to existing treatments. Would it help to calm the immune system while we rebalance the microbiome? Absolutely. Would dermatologists only prescribe our therapy—Ensemble Number Two, our eczema treatment—by itself? Probably not. Most dermatologists already prescribe multiple treatments for AD.

  Ultimately, our approach provides another tool that hasn’t been tapped into yet. It’s extremely safe—unlike immune-modulating therapies that can have serious side effects, we’re just taking microbes from healthy people and applying them to others. These microbes evolved to live on the skin. It’s super safe and complements existing therapies well.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Complementary—and maybe not as radical as I’m making it sound—but it feels like a pretty big shift in how we think about microbes and what you’re doing.

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Yeah.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  It’s similar to something we’ve seen across biotech and life sciences more broadly: tapping into things that previously seemed like enemies. For decades, we thought, How do we get rid of this? But now, we’re starting to reframe that thinking: let’s stop rejecting these things that exist at a fundamental, molecular, microbial, biological level and instead ask, How can we leverage them to get the outcomes we want?

  I might be a decade late to this, but are you seeing a similar shift? Or am I just very late to the party?

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Probably none of the above, I think. One of my co-founders, Jared Kehe, who invented the chip that we use, has this as his driving motivation for starting Concerto. We have this very binary way of thinking about microbes: either they’re good for us or they’re bad for us—and mostly they’re considered bad. But that’s not really how microbes exist in the world.

  Fun fact: 30% of women have Candida albicans—the organism that causes yeast infections—just living in their vaginal canal. No big deal. They don’t get infections. Why? That’s very strange. This is also true of staph aureus—it can exist on skin and be completely fine. There’s something about opportunism, where context is very important for how these microbes behave.

  We see this not just in the microbiome but also in things like cancer, where cancer can sit there quietly and not be a huge problem—until suddenly it is. What causes these shifts?

  What got me very excited about starting Concerto is the idea of building medicine based on ecosystems—viewing the body as an ecosystem, instead of viewing it as “mostly fine except for one broken protein” or “mostly fine except for one out-of-control microbe.” That’s not what’s really happening. The body is a very interconnected system, and the microbial ecosystems living on us are just one area where we can start to create ecology-based medicine.

  If we can show that it’s possible there, then where else might we apply these principles? I think cancer, immunity, autoimmunity, and allergy are all areas where it will be really interesting to see what kinds of therapies become effective in the future.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  I love the perspective. I’ll ask in a moment about why you chose the name Concerto because it feels very relevant to what we’re discussing right now. It makes sense to think about these things as ecologies—as systems. Whether it’s polypharmacology, combinatorial space, or something else, it’s about understanding how interacting with one thing impacts another.

  How can we get a certain reaction while suppressing or enhancing another effect? Hopefully, that lays the groundwork for a future where we can treat conditions without long lists of side effects. That might be an oversimplification, but I love that perspective. It sounds like that’s core to how you think about building a Concerto. So, why the name Concerto?

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  For those listening who might not know, a concerto is a piece of music with a central player—like a violin concerto where the violinist performs a solo at some point. That melody is supported by the entire orchestra around them.

  That’s how we think about our products: we’re looking for combinations of microbes—we literally call them “ensembles”—that work together to support a central function we want to deliver to a person, a plant, the soil, or something else. The idea of multiple microbes coming together to support a core function or promote a central microbe is what inspired the name.

   

  Samantha Herrick:
  I checked out concertobio.com/company, and here’s what I found about their mission and values.

  Their mission, straight from the website: We create safe, effective microbial products for our world. First came antibiotics, then genetic engineering. Concerto is catalyzing a third wave of microbial technologies to capture what microbes do best: protect the health of our bodies, our food, and our planet.

  Accessing these ecologically inspired microbial products requires rigorous discovery science, a strong collaborative culture, and an unwavering commitment to improvement.

  Their company values:

  • Grow by experimenting

  • Work rigorously

  • Listen intently

  • Act with compassion

  Their tagline: Harness microbial ecology with Concerto to develop new transformative products.

  I also want to highlight their kChip discovery engine, which Cheri mentioned earlier. On their website, they describe it concisely:

  • What it is: A powerful, versatile technology that leverages miniaturization and random self-assembly to construct and measure millions of defined microbial combinations simultaneously.

  • What it does: It solves the N-choose-K problem. Starting from a collection of microbes, kChip constructs microbial combinations (co-cultures) to unveil the hidden ecology of each microbiome.

  • How it works: Microbes naturally work together to improve health, enhance food quality, and boost crop yield. Designing products that replicate these benefits requires an unprecedented understanding of how microbes behave together.

  kChip physically constructs millions of miniature microbial communities by combinatorially recombining a library of microbes and/or environmental factors to generate massive datasets. By observing these communities, they identify key ecological ingredients—microbes, prebiotics, postbiotics—that drive beneficial capabilities in natural ecosystems.

  The possibilities are bigger than any one company, so Concerto engages with co-discovery partners in biotech and biopharma to unleash a new era of microbial research and create a treasure trove of microbe-based products.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Fantastic. I appreciate that you’ve mentioned the future of the business as very long term. There are clinical trials now and many applications ahead—topical treatments, food, and countless other industries.

  What’s your long-term vision—maybe not pie-in-the-sky, but 30 years from now? What would make you say, “Concerto did X”? Whether that’s dominating an industry, enabling a specific treatment, or something else, what’s the bigger picture you’re thinking about for this technology?

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  I think I’d be disappointed if Concerto only accomplished one thing. For example, if all we did was create a game-changing therapeutic for atopic dermatitis—no offense to people with eczema; I know it’s hugely frustrating, and we definitely want to address it—that alone wouldn’t be enough.

  There’s just so much more that microbes can do for our world, our health, and our environment.

  What I’d love to see—this isn’t a five-year vision but more of a 30- to 50-year vision—is for Concerto to have the same kind of reputation that Intel has. Intel is inside everything—computers, phones—and makes all of it work.

  I’d love for there to be a whole new class of products that exist because Concerto figured out how microbial ecosystems work. Products that fundamentally change how we interface with the world—and ultimately change how we practice medicine.

  Cheri Ackerman:
  I mean, imagine a world where, for a basic ear infection or sinus infection, you don’t get an antibiotic. Instead, you receive a microbial cocktail that takes care of the infection and rebalances the ecosystem. You don’t experience recurrent ear infections anymore, and you avoid all the collateral damage to your gut microbiome.

  It’s a completely different paradigm—a different world we could live in.

  This could also apply to the widespread use of antimicrobials across the meat industry and agriculture, including antifungals and pesticides, which we don’t actually need. The shift would be toward recognizing that microbes work for us, not against us. We would know how to harness them, and chemical interventions for microbes would only be used when truly necessary—like with a bloodstream infection.

  We’d no longer be stuck in this ongoing, damaging cycle of antimicrobial resistance. The idea is to create a completely new class of products—and for Concerto to become a household name for making that class of product possible.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  I think that’s just incredible framing. It really feels like an infrastructure-level shift, where you could see a little Concerto logo…

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Yeah, on everything.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  …at the bottom of every product you buy. I think that’s an incredible vision, and we’re excited for it.

  Coming back to the present—since that’s long-term—I promised I’d bring it back to the existing clinical trials. Can you give us a better sense of where you are now?

  It sounds like you’ve got two things in the pipeline. Where are they in development? And let’s also give something back to the people with eczema listening. If this works, what’s a realistic timeline for when they might start thinking differently about managing eczema?

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Well, it is going through FDA pathways, and we absolutely respect everything the FDA does for us—ensuring that medicines are safe and effective. That means there’s a lot of testing to make sure that just because we think something is safe, it actually is; and just because we think it will help, it truly does—and statistically so.

  Where we are now is very early stages. It’s just going on to people for the first time. It’s a phase 1 trial—specifically a 1B—so it’s being tested in patients with atopic dermatitis. This allows us to measure what happens to their AD.

  After that, we’d need a phase 2 trial, and then a couple of phase 3 trials. Typically, a phase 2 trial takes about two to three years. Phase 3 trials can run in parallel, but you’re looking at another two to three years.

  Finally, the biologics license application (BLA) process—which is the equivalent of a new drug application for biologics—takes about a year.

  So, in the fastest scenario, if everything goes perfectly and we sprint, we’re talking six or seven years. Things could happen along the way that make it longer.

  That said, this is the process for every drug. I truly believe it’s worth it. It ensures that we get high-quality medicines we can rely on to do what they’re supposed to. And if we’re going to develop a drug out of microbes, we absolutely want it to be highly efficacious.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  I completely agree. Beyond just peace of mind, knowing all drugs and treatments on the market have gone through this rigorous process is huge. We love and appreciate the FDA.

  That leads to my next question: looking ahead, what are the challenges or barriers you see? Maybe they’re not unsolvable problems, but things that could slow development—regulatory, scientific, technical, people, or market factors?

  It sounds like timelines are “long” rather than “delayed,” since that’s just how the regulatory framework works.

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  They just are.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  They just are.

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  They’re not delayed—they’re just long.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Yeah, it’s just a long timeline.

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Everybody in Boston biotech—all biotech—knows the timelines are just long.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  So is that the main inhibiting factor?

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  No.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  No? Okay.

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  The atopic dermatitis market today is booming. The number of drugs coming onto the market right now is kind of insane.

   

  Samantha Herrick:
  Okay, one more ad—I promise we’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.

   

  Speaker 5:
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  Cheri Ackerman:
  The amount of competition we’re facing could be a factor. If there’s ever a drug that works for the vast majority of patients—which I’d argue doesn’t exist today—that could be a significant headwind for us.

  I think the biggest challenge right now is dealing with the “hype trough” the microbiome field is in.

  Microbiome was super hot in the early 2010s. A bunch of large companies formed with hundreds of millions in capital. They made incredible progress, particularly in educating the FDA.

  The FDA was used to working with small molecules or antibodies targeting specific proteins, where they understand the interactions and have well-established toxicology data. None of that fits microbial interventions.

  Those early companies did the hard work of engaging with the FDA—figuring out how microbial interventions should be evaluated. Do concepts like PK/PD (pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics) even apply?

  They also made huge progress on infrastructure—for example, how to produce a microbial intervention so the FDA believes it’s manufactured safely under GMP (good manufacturing practices).

  And then, many of those companies failed. They did tremendous work for the field but ended up with bad clinical trial results. Many have shut down, especially during the 2022–2023 slump.

  It’s rough to be a microbial intervention company right now. Pharma’s stance is basically: “You guys figure it out. We’ll come back once you’ve proven what works and what doesn’t.”

  Most big pharma companies have closed their microbiome divisions. There’s not much we can do about that. So, I’d say it’s actually market conditions and the hype cycle that make this the hardest right now.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Okay, I was almost going to end there, but that feels like a negative note to wrap up on.

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Too negative, yeah.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  So, respond to that. As one of Concerto’s founders, if pharma’s pulling back and the field is in a downturn, why should people be excited about Concerto? What’s different now versus a decade ago or a couple of years ago?

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  There are a couple of compelling reasons. First, microbial products are inevitable. We’re going to live in a world where we can use microbes to our benefit. They’re already here; we know they influence us. Being able to reliably control them in ways that help us will unlock billions of dollars of value.

  Somebody’s going to make that possible.

  As for why Concerto could be that company—part of why we built kChip was that the datasets earlier microbiome companies worked with were very limited.

  They used older methods of profiling microbial populations: making lists of microbes found in healthy people versus sick people and trying to correlate that to health or disease.

  But those approaches lacked a deep understanding of why a specific microbe would promote health in one person and not another.

  Cheri Ackerman:
  A lot of the studies done in the 2010s were based on correlations and associations, which didn’t turn out to be causation. And everyone was like, “Well, yeah, because correlation and causation are not the same thing.” And that’s okay—I think it’s worth going after a technology when it’s still version one.

  But what Concerto is building is not version one. We’re expressly working only in areas where there is underlying knowledge of the biochemistry, the microbiology—what’s actually going on.

  When I say that staph aureus is known to grow on the surface of skin, that it grows out of control, and that this triggers flares—we actually know the different proteins that staph aureus expresses that cause these problems. Concerto has very specific targets to go after in a way that microbiome companies from 10 years ago didn’t have. In some cases, those targets weren’t available, and in some cases they still aren’t.

  I think the science is a lot more mature now, and Concerto has a dataset through kChip that lets us understand the microbiome in a completely different way.

  And one more reason to bet on us—because we’re now one of only a very few companies working in this space—it means the field is wide open for us. Who’s going to catch up at this point? If we can keep our lead, Concerto is in a really good position to dominate this space instead of having to compete with many other companies.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  We’re certainly excited. For a parting question—hopefully people listening are excited about this new microbial world and about Concerto. To our community of 700,000 people across all walks of life, what can they do to help?

  This might be abstract, but say some random Joe Schmo loves Cheri and Concerto—what should they do? Aside from giving money.

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  I was just going to say—that’s not a random Joe Schmo, that’s cash. Any cash helps. But seriously, the minimum bar would be: follow us on LinkedIn, promote what we’re doing, and stay engaged with the microbiome world. Talk about us with your friends—that’s very helpful.

  Another thing is to figure out from your networks who wishes they could incorporate better science behind microbe-based products.

  We’re currently testing a hypothesis that microbial ingredients can be differentiated in the CPG (consumer packaged goods) space. Right now, there are a lot of standard functional ingredients that, frankly, are getting stale—things like zinc for dandruff and benzoyl peroxide for acne. These are a dime a dozen at CVS.

  We think brands are looking for ways to differentiate, and we believe microbial ingredients can help. So if you want to help test that hypothesis and know people who’d want to talk about it, that’s something we’re actively exploring.

  Drew Wandzilak:
  I love it. Like, comment, subscribe, follow Concerto on every platform. You guys do a great job of being as transparent as possible and promoting what you’re doing.

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Yeah, we have great content—follow us on LinkedIn. Really great content.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  Great content. Seriously, I’m hyping you guys up. I’m not a scientist by trade, and I’ve really enjoyed the learnings and excitement that come through your posts.

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Thanks.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  It’s been a fun follow. Fantastic. Cheri, thank you so much for joining us.

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Truly my pleasure to be here.

   

  Drew Wandzilak:
  That was fantastic and a ton of fun. We really appreciate it and wish you the best of luck. We’ll talk soon.

   

  Cheri Ackerman:
  Thanks. Awesome.

   

  Samantha Herrick:
  Thanks again for tuning into The Tech Optimist. If you enjoyed this episode, we’d really appreciate it if you gave us a rating on whichever podcast app you’re using. And remember to subscribe to keep up with each episode.

  The Tech Optimist welcomes any questions, comments, or segment suggestions. Please email us at [email protected] with any of those, and be sure to visit our website at av.vc.

  As always, keep building.