{"entity":{"id":"persephone-biosciences","kind":"company","name":"Persephone Biosciences","aka":[],"tldr":"Persephone studies the gut bacteria of cancer patients and designs live bacterial medicines meant to make immunotherapy work for more people.","summary":"Persephone Biosciences develops live biotherapeutic products that modulate gut microbial metabolism, using systems and synthetic biology to understand which microbiome features track with response to cancer immunotherapy. It ran the ARGONAUT observational study collecting stool and blood from patients with colorectal, pancreatic, lung and other cancers on checkpoint inhibitors to build that map, and has a separate infant microbiome programme. Oncology programmes are preclinical or early clinical; no round amounts are recorded here because none was fetched from a primary source.","asOf":"2026-09-10","links":[{"label":"Y Combinator profile","url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/persephone-biosciences"},{"label":"Official website","url":"https://persephonebiosciences.com"}],"tags":["yc"],"related":[],"cancers":["colorectal"],"sections":["immunotherapy","prevention"],"technologies":["checkpoint-inhibitor"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hq":"San Diego, CA","country":"US","companyType":"biotech","website":"https://persephonebiosciences.com","stage":"startup","ycBatch":"W18","investors":["y-combinator"],"funding":[]},"route":"/companies/persephone-biosciences/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"colorectal","kind":"cancer","name":"Colorectal cancer","route":"/cancers/colorectal/"}],"section":[{"id":"immunotherapy","kind":"section","name":"Immunotherapy","route":"/fronts/immunotherapy/"},{"id":"prevention","kind":"section","name":"Prevention & Risk","route":"/fronts/prevention/"}],"technology":[{"id":"checkpoint-inhibitor","kind":"technology","name":"Immune checkpoint inhibitors","route":"/technologies/checkpoint-inhibitor/"}],"company":[{"id":"y-combinator","kind":"company","name":"Y Combinator","route":"/companies/y-combinator/"}]}}