Seed Health Taps Former Head of J&J’s Janssen Human Microbiome Institute To Lead R&D

Seed Health, a microbiome sciences company that focuses on probiotics and live biotherapeutics, has hired Dirk Gevers, Ph.D., as its chief scientific officer (CSO). Gevers joins from Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies, where he helped launch the Janssen Human Microbiome Institute (JHMI) and served as global head.

With 15 years of experience in translational microbiome research and global team-building, Gevers will guide Seed Health's R&D and scale the company's platform to enable rapid, efficient advancement of microbial research from discovery to market.

He will expand the global R&D team with a focus on discovery, translation, and clinical development for applications across gastrointestinal and digestive health, women's health, skin and oral care, pediatrics, mental health, metabolic function and nutrition.

Seed Health rolled out PDS-08 Pediatric Daily Synbiotic, a clinically studied, two-in-one powdered synbiotic formulated for children and adolescents in late 2021. It also has an adult synbiotic.

“I was impressed by Seed's commitment to scientific excellence and their platform-based approach to harnessing the power of the microbiome,” said Gevers. “Seed is uniquely converging deep functional insights in the human microbiome with efforts to clinically validate the next-generation of microbiome interventions. This, in combination with the scope of Seed's portfolio and effective commercialization model, gives me the opportunity to drive true impact in health.”

Prior to his work at J&J, Gevers was at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he collaborated with clinical and analytical partners applying the Broad Institute's data generation platform to a range of microbiome-related projects. During his career, he held a leading role in the National Institute of Health's Human Microbiome Project Consortium and has published more than 140 peer-reviewed papers, many of which laid the foundation for human microbiome research.

Gevers will also oversee Seed Health's external scientific and academic collaborations with institutions such as Caltech, Harvard University, MIT, University of Zurich, Stanford University, Mass General Hospital, and Cleveland Clinic.

Seed Health’s consumer innovations in probiotics are commercialized under the Seed brand. Environmental research is conducted under SeedLabs, which was founded to develop novel bacterial interventions to enhance biodiversity and restore ecosystems impacted by human activity.