Dr. Deanna Gibson kept encountering the same stubborn problem inside her gut-health lab at UBC Okanagan. She couldn’t figure out why probiotic bacteria didn’t have a clinical effect in people with conditions like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

A professor in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, Dr. Gibson studies the relationship between the gut microbiome, inflammation and health. “I truly believe in the power of beneficial microbes,” she says. “But why weren’t they working? That was the problem I wanted to solve.”

The probiotics industry is worth billions, but Dr. Gibson’s Centre for Microbiome and Inflammation Research kept identifying gaps between expectations and results. It took nearly a decade for her to find answers, and to turn her ideas into Melius MicroBiomics, a Kelowna biotech company approaching its first human clinical trial.

Along the way, Melius has built a fully equipped laboratory, assembled a multidisciplinary scientific team and developed in-house product-development capabilities to target human inflammatory bowel disease as well as animal digestive health.

Bioengineering probiotics into effective therapeutics

It seems somewhat inevitable that Dr. Gibson pursued a PhD in micro-organisms of the gut.

She grew up in the Prairies, rural enough that a gastroenterologist was a two-hour drive away. Her family had a history of digestive illness, but inflammatory bowel diseases were poorly understood, and diagnoses were harder to come by.

Dr. Gibson immersed herself in the gastroenterology field, from academic and industry perspectives. She heard surgery discussed not as a last resort for those with IBD, but as an option ahead of medication. Her research pointed toward other directions.

She decided to focus her efforts on finding a way to apply her microbiology knowledge to help treat people. “The only way I knew how to do that was to actually start a company,” Dr. Gibson says.

The inflamed gut presents a particular challenge for probiotic bacteria. Gibson describes it as “planting a seed in a field on fire,” since gut inflammation disrupts microbial colonization. “It’s not that probiotics are useless; it’s that we’re asking them to survive a war zone,” she says. “What if, instead of fighting the inflammation, we engineered a bacterium to use it?”

The journal Gastroenterology featured her research in a cover story called “Fueled by the Fire.”

Building a biotech ecosystem in the Okanagan

A Crohn’s and Colitis Canada grant helped create and validate the science. But turning it into something commercial required expertise and capital Dr. Gibson didn’t have.

“To go clinical, and through the regulatory path, it’s millions of dollars,” she says.

UBC’s contribution came in the form of laboratory infrastructure, technology-transfer support, industry connections and a pool of talented graduates her own research program had helped train. That support built the pathway from an academic insight to a company now employing highly skilled people in the Okanagan.

The next point on Dr. Gibson’s path was an innovation-to-commercialization award from Michael Smith Health Research BC. Then, it was meeting entrepreneur Robert Emlyn.

Emlyn founded Innovate Phytoceuticals in 2018 with a focus on translating discoveries emerging from universities such as UBC into practical products. He built a laboratory resourced and equipped for microbial and molecular biology, analytical testing, formulation, stability studies and small-batch manufacturing.

By October 2022, the laboratory beside the UBC Okanagan campus was fully operational, employing several of the university’s graduates. When Dr. Gibson met Emyln at an innovation networking event, they ended up talking for two hours about what would become their new company.

“What struck me was that she had not simply identified the problem; she had engineered a solution,” Emlyn says. “I remember thinking almost immediately: this is it. This has real potential.”

Dr. Gibson and Emlyn co-founded Melius MicroBiomics in 2023. With UBC’s support for protecting the intellectual property and an exclusive license covering human and veterinary applications, the foundation for commercial development was in place. The laboratory business was subsequently amalgamated into Melius, bringing its team and product-development capabilities together with the tech.

Working in-house in Kelowna, Melius completed the chemistry, manufacturing and controls work needed to turn the discovery into a stable, consistently manufactured investigational product for its first human clinical trial.

With more than $40 million deployed to date, Melius has brought together UBC graduates and international specialists to advance the program through product development and regulatory milestones.

Melius has cleared the regulatory approvals it needs to begin human trials, set for late 2026. The trial will start with healthy volunteers before moving to patients with mild-to-moderate ulcerative colitis.

From invention to commercialization

Melius illustrates how a research university can help build the conditions for an innovation economy outside a major urban centre.

The cost advantages and proximity to the university itself helped make Melius possible. Fifteen full-time staff now work at the company, most of them UBC-trained scientists. UBC Okanagan was critical to building that talent pool, and Melius has been critical to retaining talent in the region.

“We’ve already shown that the region can support the science and early product development,” Emlyn says. “Now the opportunity is to build the manufacturing infrastructure that allows products developed here to keep advancing here.”

The technology has now moved from academic discovery into a defined development program. BioPersist is Melius’s first platform within its genetically engineered microbial program.

Working with the Innovation UBC office, Dr. Gibson came to understand the patent and licensing process to protect innovation, intellectual property and the people behind it.

It’s an entrepreneurial approach someone like Emlyn appreciates.

“I don’t want us to be an isolated success,” he says. “I’d like us to promote the region, attract capital and experienced people, support other UBC inventions and help create the infrastructure that makes commercialization possible.”

Melius has already translated technology from a UBC lab into a functioning company.

“Even though it felt impossible most of the time, I genuinely loved those early years of building a biotechnology company with Rob and an incredibly talented team of scientists,” Dr. Gibson says. “It demanded everything from us, but it was worth it for our community, university and for the people whose careers we’ve helped create. And ultimately, it’s worth it because the work has the potential to improve IBD patients’ lives.”

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