Wednesday, September 4, 2019

Brief Blog; Ubiome Files for Bankrupcy

According to the WSJ and other sources, on September 4, 2019, UBIOME filed for bankruptcy, suspended operations, and put its assets up for sale.  Story here.  Business Insider  open access, here.  Forbes here.

In particular, the company had prior raised $83M from some leading investors.  For an investigative story had Business Insider (subscription), Erin Brodwin, in August 2019, here.

Some additional press.  Exconomy, "UBiome Founders May Have Misled Investors," here.  From back in September 2018, exactly a year ago, "uBiome Jumps Into Therapeutics with $84M in Series C," TechCrunch, here.

I was briefly quoted in a WSJ story on the case, back in June (here).  I had discussed my experience with consumer testing at COLOR and at UBIOME in December 2018 (here).  I also posted some redacted multi-thousand-dollar bills that UBIOME sent to my insurer, after I had paid for the DTC test by credit card originally.  (May 2019, here.).  A teledoctor I had never heard of (NPI '768 in California) had ordered my test in the background before the Ubiome bill went to the insurer.  The insurer entirely rejected the claim.