Anteros Bio

Did you know September is Sexual Health Awareness Month? True that we’re not in September yet, but given that we will be soon, Anteros’s mission felt particularly relevant.

Also in September: if you’re in SF, join us and the Intercom team on Wednesday, September 24, for a fireside chat with Max Marchione, co-founder of Superpower. We’ll be diving into all things zero to one in startups, as well as his thoughts around the future of personal health tech.

Ethan and Arek 🦄

Anteros Bio is a consumer biotech company making at-home genital microbiome test kits for couples. Anteros aims to help couples track their sexual health over time and assess the effectiveness of lifestyle changes and treatments they may be undergoing. This can help prevent recurring infections and promote a joint approach to managing sexual health concerns, acting as a sexual health companion to improve health outcomes for both partners.

Check it out: anterosbio.com

GTM events can feel... predictable. Same buzzwords, same playbooks, same “networking” that never goes beyond exchanging LinkedIn QR codes.

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The company plans to launch its sexual health kit as a one-time purchase, but intends to eventually introduce a subscription model. Because microbiomes can change frequently due to various factors, including lifestyle and medication, a subscription would enable couples to test their microbiomes every three to four months to track their health over time.

• Filed non-provisional utility patent for its testing kits

• Launched MVP test kit, with an official launch planned before the end of the year

• Head of Engineering

• Head of Community and Social Media

• Head of AI

Interested in these opportunities? Reply to this email with your resume, and we’ll connect you with the Anteros team.

During a previous relationship, Anteros Bio founder and CEO Denisa Kim experienced dozens of UTIs with her partner, which she had never encountered while single. This pattern motivated her to investigate the connection between sexual health and the microbiome.

Kim immersed herself in scientific literature on the microbiome, with a particular focus on vaginal health, seeking to understand the root causes of these recurring infections. When she tested existing at-home vaginal microbiome testing kits, she immediately identified a critical gap: none offered partner testing, leaving couples with an incomplete picture of their shared microbiome health.

Through Facebook support groups, Kim also learned about the prevalence of common vaginal infections like bacterial vaginosis and yeast infections that many women experience. She discovered that the standard treatment approaches, including antibiotics for bacterial infections and antifungals for fungal infections, actually destroy the microbiome further, leading to long-term health complications.

These revelations sparked the creation of Anteros. Now, the company is rapidly building and iterating, planning to send ten pilot kits to couples, and preparing to officially launch by the end of the year.

Anteros Bio is a first mover in the expanding at-home sexual health testing market. As the market expands, Anteros’ intellectual property patent protects its unique partner testing kits and technology, providing a competitive moat. The sector is expected to grow significantly due to increasing consumer demand for convenient, private, and accessible diagnostic solutions. The global market for STD self-testing, for example, is projected to nearly double by 2030, driven by advancements in technology and a push within public health to encourage early detection and prevention. Public health trends emphasize growing vulnerabilities to STIs and infertility globally, placing Anteros' couple-testing approach and platform in alignment with broader healthcare goals aimed at prevention and personalized medicine.

At the same time, the data generated from repeated couple-based microbiome testing offers Anteros a rich longitudinal dataset that allows for the development of proprietary AI and machine learning models capable of delivering predictive insights about sexual health, infection risks, treatment efficacy, and related microbiome conditions such as bacterial vaginosis and yeast infections. These insights not only enhance its primary diagnostic offering but unlock additional product offerings and revenue opportunities such as personalized health recommendations, fertility and reproductive health products, and preventative care for microbiome imbalances linked to urogenital and reproductive disorders. The link between the microbiome and fertility-related factors such as sperm motility, egg quality, and implantation success opens possibilities for Anteros to expand its platform into these adjacent markets. 

The company has yet another monetization pathway through the licensing of its predictive risk models to healthcare providers, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies. This would complement its B2C subscription model, enabling the company to reach end users through another avenue. 

Together, these elements create both barriers to entry for competitors and long-term value creation potential for Anteros, enabling it to evolve from testing kits to a comprehensive biotech platform delivering personalized diagnostics and data-driven insights in the growing domain of sexual health and microbiome science.

• Microbiome [National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences]

• Urinary Track Infection and Microbiome [Diagnostics]

• Vaginal microbiome and sexually transmitted infections: an epidemiologic perspective [The Journal of Clinical Investigation]

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