Mayo Clinic Bets on Postbiotics in Fight Against Breast Cancer

MILAN – December 09, 2025 – As oncologists and researchers gather in Texas for the prestigious San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) this week, a novel area of investigation is taking center stage. Milan-based SciencePower, a postbiotic platform company, has entered into a significant research collaboration with Mayo Clinic to explore how inanimate microbial compounds could influence breast cancer biology. The partnership, underpinned by a licensing agreement, signals a major validation for an emerging class of therapeutics and highlights a strategic push by one of the world's leading medical centers into the next frontier of microbiome science.

Early preclinical findings from this collaboration are scheduled for presentation at SABCS, offering the first glimpse into the potential of SciencePower's proprietary postbiotic compositions derived from Lactobacillus paracasei. The research aims to unravel how these compounds interact with the immune and cellular pathways that drive breast cancer, a question that could open entirely new avenues for treatment and prevention.

The Postbiotic Paradigm Shift

For years, the conversation around gut health has been dominated by probiotics—live beneficial bacteria—and prebiotics, the fibers that feed them. Now, the scientific lexicon is expanding to include postbiotics, a term that represents a crucial evolution in our understanding of the microbiome's impact on human health. The International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) defines postbiotics as a "preparation of inanimate microorganisms and/or their components that confers a health benefit on the host."

In simple terms, postbiotics are the beneficial byproducts and non-living cellular components that result from probiotic activity. This category includes a complex cocktail of compounds like short-chain fatty acids, cell wall fragments, and enzymes. The key distinction is their inanimate nature. By using non-living material, postbiotics circumvent many of the challenges associated with live probiotics, such as stability during manufacturing and storage, and the potential risk of infection in immunocompromised individuals—a critical consideration in oncology. This inherent safety and stability make them a highly attractive candidate for standardized, reproducible therapeutic development.

The market is responding to this potential. While still an emerging sector, market projections estimate the global postbiotics market will grow at a CAGR of over 10% in the coming years, reaching upwards of $32 million by 2032. This collaboration is a prime example of the field moving from wellness trends to rigorous, high-stakes medical research.

A Strategic Alliance: Validation and Vision

The involvement of Mayo Clinic is arguably the most significant aspect of this announcement, lending substantial credibility to SciencePower's platform. For a leading academic medical center to not only collaborate on research but also take a direct financial interest in the company—a detail disclosed in the announcement—is a powerful endorsement. According to the agreement, Mayo Clinic will channel any revenue from this interest back into its non-profit mission of patient care, education, and research, creating a virtuous cycle of innovation.

This move is not an isolated bet but a calculated step in Mayo Clinic's long-standing exploration of the microbiome's role in cancer. As far back as 2016, its researchers published landmark findings showing distinct differences in the microbial communities within the breast tissue of healthy women versus those with breast cancer. This and subsequent studies on the gut-cancer axis have built a strong foundation of evidence suggesting that the body's microbial inhabitants are not passive bystanders but active participants in disease development and progression. By partnering with SciencePower, Mayo Clinic is now investing in a specific technological approach to translate these observational findings into a potential therapeutic intervention.

“This milestone marks an important step in validating our technology through rigorous scientific collaboration,” said Robin Albin, SciencePower Co-Founder, in the company's press release. “We are honored to work with Mayo Clinic researchers to deepen the understanding of postbiotics and their potential role in advancing human health.”

Inside the Innovation: Sequential Fermentation

At the heart of SciencePower's approach is its patent-pending 'Sequential Fermentation Technology.' The company describes this proprietary process as a system designed to mimic the dynamic, multi-stage environment of the human gut. Rather than a simple, single-strain fermentation, this technology likely involves a more complex, controlled cascade of microbial activity, allowing for the production of a rich and consistent composition of bioactive postbiotic compounds.

The goal is to move beyond the variability often seen in microbiome-based products and achieve highly reproducible outcomes. SciencePower's focus is on three key areas of impact: modulating the overall microbiome, reinforcing the integrity of the gut barrier, and balancing the immune system. A compromised gut barrier, often called "leaky gut," is linked to systemic inflammation, which is a known contributor to cancer development and progression. By producing postbiotics that can strengthen this barrier and modulate immune responses, the technology aims to address the root causes of disease-promoting inflammation.

The research being presented at SABCS by Prof. Roberto Berni Canani focuses on a specific composition derived from Lactobacillus paracasei, a well-known probiotic species. By isolating and concentrating the postbiotic components, the researchers can study their direct effects on breast cancer pathways without the confounding factors of live bacteria, a critical step in developing a targeted, drug-like agent.

The Broader Battlefield: Microbiome vs. Cancer

SciencePower and Mayo Clinic are not alone in their quest to harness microbes in the fight against cancer. The field of microbiome-based oncology is exploding, with numerous biotech firms and academic labs exploring the intricate connections between our microbial cohabitants and cancer. Companies like Vedanta Biosciences and MaaT Pharma are developing live biotherapeutics to modulate the gut microbiome to improve patient responses to immunotherapy, particularly checkpoint inhibitors. Others, like Biomica, are using advanced computational platforms to identify specific bacteria that can trigger anti-tumor immune responses.

However, SciencePower’s focus on postbiotics carves out a distinct niche. While many competitors work with live, often complex, bacterial consortia, SciencePower is essentially deconstructing the microbiome to isolate the active, non-living molecules. This reductionist approach aligns more closely with traditional pharmaceutical development, potentially offering a clearer path to regulatory approval and more precise dosing. The research seeks to answer whether the beneficial effects observed from certain probiotics are, in fact, attributable to the postbiotic compounds they produce.

If successful, this strategy could unlock a new class of therapeutics that are safer, more stable, and more scalable than their living counterparts. The collaboration's focus on breast cancer is particularly poignant, as it is a disease where immune response and systemic inflammation play well-documented roles. The findings presented this week, though early, could represent a foundational step toward a future where precisely defined, microbiome-derived compounds become a standard part of the oncologist's toolkit, used to make existing treatments more effective or to directly combat the disease itself.

The journey from preclinical data to a widely available treatment is long and fraught with challenges, but this alliance between a pioneering tech firm and a world-class medical institution marks a significant and promising development in the war against breast cancer.