ADM Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of ADM (NYSE: ADM), has announced its investment in Seventure’s Health For Life Capital (HFLC) Fund II. HFLC, based in Paris, is a leading venture capital fund dedicated to health, nutrition, microbiota and digital health.

“We view Seventure as the premier investor in microbiome startups focused on human health and nutrition, and since 2018, ADM has worked closely with the Seventure team to identify opportunities with microbiome solutions that can ultimately help with dietary supplements and food and beverage applications to serve as functional or proactive solutions,” said Darren Streiler, managing director of ADM Ventures. “We believe Seventure can help meet the long-term demand we see as the result of the convergence of food and pharmaceuticals and consumers looking more towards bioactives and nutrition for wellness solutions.”

The microbiome consists of trillions of micro-organisms that reside on or inside the human body. ADM’s primary interest is the vast, complex bacterial ecosystem that lives within the digestive tract and constitutes the majority of every individual’s unique microbiome.

“With a better understanding of how the microbiome ecosystem works, we can develop functional ingredients for dietary supplements and food and beverage solutions targeted to help improve overall health,” Streiler said. “We are focused on looking at new, innovative solutions that can lead to a more balanced bacterial system in your digestive tract, otherwise known as a healthy gut, and can help lead to better health.”

ADM is committed to discovering and leveraging nutritional ingredients that can be used for preventative health, as well as for treating common ailments or even chronic diseases in both humans and animals. The company’s new probiotics production facility in Valencia, Spain—which will significantly increase its post- and prebiotic production capacity—is planned to be online in 2022.

ADM is an established market leader for microbiome solutions, with an award-winning portfolio of products and ingredients, including NutraIngredients’ 2020 ‘Probiotic Product of the Year,’ ADM’s Bio-Kult Migréa; 2020 Ingredient of the Year in the Weight Management category, ADM’s Bifidobacterium lactis BPL1; and the 2020 Editor’s Award winner for Functional Food Innovation, ADM’s Bacillus subtilis PXN21, a live microbial strain shown to reduce the aggregation of α-synuclein, paving the way for future research in Parkinson’s disease.

For more information about ADM’s functional health solutions, visit www.adm.com/functionalhealth.