MRM Health Taps Microbiome Drug Veterans as MH002 Nears Late-Stage Trials

MRM Health is stacking its board with executives who have already done what the company is trying to do: bring a microbiome therapy through FDA approval and into the clinic. The Belgian biotech named Michel Detheux as chairman and Hans-Jürgen Wörle as an independent director, both joining as its lead candidate MH002 moves through Phase 2b trials for inflammatory bowel diseases.

Detheux founded iTeos Therapeutics, took it public via a $335 million Nasdaq IPO in 2020, and later struck a $2 billion collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline for its lead program. Wörle was global vice president of medicine at Boehringer Ingelheim, where he helped develop Jardiance and Trajenta, and later served as chief scientific and medical officer at Nestlé Health Science. At Nestlé, he worked on Vowst, the first FDA-approved oral microbiome therapy, and helped sell it off in a commercial transaction.

“The microbiome field has moved from promise to proof, and the question now is which programs can be developed with the rigor and discipline that regulators and patients require,” Wörle said in the announcement. He cited MRM Health’s CORAL platform and MH002’s clinical data as the combination of science and execution that defines the next generation.

MH002 has already shown positive Phase 2a data in ulcerative colitis and pouchitis. The company secured FDA Fast Track designation and closed a €55 million Series B round in September 2025 led by Biocodex, with backing from ATHOS, BNP Paribas Fortis Private Equity, and existing investors including SFPIM and VIB.

The outgoing chairman, Werner Cautreels, had chaired MRM Health since its founding in 2020. The company thanked him for his role in the financing rounds and the advancement of MH002 toward late-stage development.

MRM Health’s CORAL platform designs live biotherapeutic products – consortia of microbes meant to treat immune-mediated diseases. The company is also expanding into other inflammatory conditions and immune-oncology, using AI-guided discovery.

For a biotech at this stage, board composition matters. Detheux brings the fundraising and exit playbook. Wörle brings the regulatory and commercial experience of getting a microbiome drug across the finish line. The question now is whether MH002 can replicate that path in IBD, where the unmet need is large but the clinical trial failure rate is high.