One Bio—a UC Davis spinoff with proprietary technology to chop up polysaccharides from agricultural waste into “odorless, colorless, and tasteless” fibers that can be added to foods at high inclusion rates—has raised a $27 million series A round.
The round was led by AlphaEdison, joined by new investors including Leaps by Bayer, Mitsui E12, Morado Ventures, ReMY, and DSM, and backed by existing investors iSelect, Skyview Life Sciences, Collaborative Fund, and Acre Venture Partners.
Founded as BCD Bioscience by Dr. Matt Amicucci, Dr. Carlito Lebrilla, Dr. Bruce German and Dr. David Mills in 2019, One Bio brought in Matt Barnard, cofounder of vertical farming firm Plenty, as cofounder and CEO in 2023.
Depolymerization tech
One Bio’s core technology is a chemical method for disassembling polysaccharides (longer-chain carbs) from thousands of plants and microbes into “invisible and tasteless” oligosaccharides, Barnard told AgFunderNews.
The process—which does not change the structure of the fiber, but makes it soluble, digestible and palatable—is initiated by a reaction between a metal catalyst (iron) and an oxidizing agent (hydrogen peroxide) to produce reactive radical species that chop up polysaccharides into oligosaccharides that can then be characterized using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry.
This will enable formulators to add meaningful amounts of fiber to products at levels that were previously out of reach because the fiber content made the end product unpalatable, claimed Barnard.
“We have characterized and cataloged the structures of fibers across the plant world, and the tool we use to do that can now make them available to add to almost any food or beverage. Basically, the method was originally developed as an analytical tool but it’s actually scalable as a process to produce large amounts of these oligosaccharides.”
One Bio—which was initially positioned as a “precision prebiotics” company—also uses third-party tools such as SHIME (an invitro simulator of the human digestive system or ‘model gut’) and an in-house high-throughput screening platform that allows it to test how fibers impact the gut microbiome.
“Understanding the structure/function relationships of polysaccharides requires that their structures be known. They are not. The impact that dietary carbohydrates have on the gut microbiome is, generally, indirectly measured by genomic and transcriptomic techniques rather than through direct carbohydrate analysis, which continues to hinder our mechanistic understanding of this complicated process. There is an immediate and pressing need to expand the current toolbox of polysaccharide characterization if we are to better understand diet–microbe interactions.” Nature Communications, 2020
“The starvation of our microbiome and lack of sufficient dietary fiber can be attributed in part to the modern food processing techniques that strip a significant portion of fiber from our foods.” Matt Barnard, One Bio
The business model
One Bio’s customers are packaged food and beverage companies, said Barnard, who says a variety of business models are being explored. “So one would be, we approach a large food or beverage company and say when you make your plant milk, you are throwing away a lot of valuable oat fiber. Or when you process peas or soy for alt protein, there’s a ton of fiber that often gets thrown away.
“We go to them and say, we can take it and cut it into short chain fibers that you can add to your products. We can take what is currently a waste product and turn it into a high value ingredient.”
He added: “We are in the process of determining our first partner on-shelf in each of our first four categories: refreshment, oat and plant milk, juice, and supplements and have existing contracts across categories such as confection, juice, and supplements.”
One Bio’s process is “proprietary and novel” but can be “executed on equipment that is standard,” claimed Barnard.
But won’t it then require pricey human clinical trials that can take years to validate any potential health claims about novel fibers that may result from One Bio’s process?
Technically, yes, assuming that is what partners want to do, said Barnard. But in most cases, he said, firms are happy just to add dietary fiber at high inclusion rates without negative sensory effects, without making novel health claims on pack.
Meanwhile, he said, some of the fibers emerging from One Bio’s process are already well understood, enabling it to tap into “already proven” science. “For example, there’s already a basket of claims associated with oat beta glucan, and so we can access those claims.”
‘Odorless, colorless, tasteless’ fibers
So is One Bio a kind of ‘Brightseed for fiber’?
According to Barnard: “I’d say what makes us different is not just that we’re identifying interesting fibers, we’re actually bringing a process to release them at scale from just about any plant so that companies can add them to food and they just kind of disappear. We’re talking about odorless, colorless, highly soluble fibers that can be incorporated into food products without affecting the taste or texture at uniquely high doses, which makes them highly appealing to food formulators.”
He added: “We’re starting with things that are easy to introduce to people. So consumers already understand the value of eating oats, for example. So adding oat fiber to a beverage and saying this is the equivalent of four or five bowls of oatmeal, consumers get it. These things have performed wildly well in our customer research.”
Over time, said Barnard, “We’ll have a portfolio of things, both products and claims.”
To date, One Bio has granted patents on its depolymerization process and a composition of matter patent on the short chain fibers the process produces, plus a number of pending patents.
The funding environment
Asked about the current funding environment, Barnard said: “There’s just a fraction of the capital going in [to agrifoodtech startups] this year versus three years ago, so we are quite proud that One Bio was able to attract a round as sizable as this for a Series A [which brings the startup’s cumulative funding to $44 million].”
Fiber has always been the poor cousin of protein when it comes to consumer awareness, despite the fact that most Americans do not consume recommended amounts, he said. However, attitudes are beginning to change due to growing awareness of pre- pro- and post-biotics, references to the microbiome in the mainstream media, and increased understanding of the role of fiber in increasing satiety amidst conversations about GLP-1 drugs.
“We’re seeing more conversations about the microbiome as the engine of health, and we are starving our microbiome. We’re talking about adding simple fibers like oat fiber, olive fiber, orange fiber, and apple fiber that through our tech we can add to food at very high inclusion rates.”
While it would obviously be better for health if everyone consumed more whole fruits, vegetables, and whole grains with fiber structures intact rather than adding solubilized fibers to processed foods, that’s not the world we live in, he said.
“Absolutely, a whole food diet with a ton of fruits, vegetables, nuts, that’s the way to go. But we’re acknowledging that 70%-plus of the calories consumed today are processed and if we can slip more healthy fibers into people’s lives without asking them to change their behavior, that could make a huge difference.”
