Juno Bio

Juno Bio is a women's health diagnostics company built around sequencing-based analysis of the vaginal microbiome. Its consumer product is a $99 at-home swab kit: customers order online, self-collect a sample, and mail it back for next-generation sequencing that screens more than 10,000 microbes, with results returned in roughly 4-9 business days and reviewed and released by a licensed clinical scientist to an online dashboard. The service is CLIA certified, ships free within the US, is payable with HSA/FSA funds, and includes a free call with a vaginal microbiome health coach. Eligible customers can be routed to partner licensed US physicians for a treatment plan and prescriptions dispensed through an NABP-accredited pharmacy, and can retest over time to track changes in a saved history [0][1].

The company positions the vaginal microbiome as relevant to recurrent vaginal symptoms and infections, fertility workups, and menopause-related changes, and states the microbiome is implicated in over 30 women's health conditions including recurrent bacterial vaginosis and preterm birth. Samples are processed by extracting microbial DNA and classifying organisms, with bioinformatics and machine learning used to interpret the results into a consumer report [0][1][4]. In July 2026 Juno Bio announced a $3.8M seed round and a shift beyond direct-to-consumer wellness testing into provider-led clinical care, launching a clinical vaginal microbiome and STI test for healthcare providers that assays roughly 10,000 bacterial and fungal strains plus four common STIs from a single sample, and bringing testing in-house at its own CLIA-certified sequencing laboratory in Oakland, California [5][7].

Founding story

Juno Bio was co-founded by Hana Janebdar and Dr Leighton Turner, described as a team of scientists from London who had worked on microbiomes and were struck by how little attention had been paid to the vaginal microbiome relative to its implications for women's health; they started the company to decode the vaginal microbiome and raise the standard of women's health care [2].

Business model

Direct-to-consumer sale of at-home test kits, with bundled clinician-reviewed results and free health coaching, plus optional physician review and prescription fulfilment through partner US physicians and an NABP-accredited pharmacy; repeat revenue comes from retesting [0][1]. As of 2026 the company added a provider-facing clinical test and states it is pursuing pharmaceutical R&D partnerships and in-house lab diagnostic output [5][7].

Per-test product sales; the consumer vaginal microbiome test is priced at $99 with coaching and results included, which the site contrasts with comparable services at $248 and traditional labs at $250-$5,000+ [0][1].

Traction

More than 20,000 tests sold through the original consumer offering, with the site citing 20,000+ users and a 4.8/5 star rating [0][1][5][7]. The company reports that before using its test nearly 68% of customers had been incorrectly diagnosed in some way, only 13% reported successful treatment, and around half of users had multiple concurrent infections [5]. It also ran The Juno Study, an IRB-approved study in which over 1,000 US women registered to build a repository of vaginal microbiomes [4].

Latest developments

In July 2026 Juno Bio raised $3.8M in seed funding from Ada Ventures (lead), Artesian, Entrepreneur First and Illumina Accelerator, to be used for expanding clinical testing infrastructure, accelerating pharmaceutical R&D partnerships and scaling output of its newly opened Oakland sequencing facility. Alongside the round it brought testing in-house at its first CLIA-certified laboratory and launched a provider-facing clinical vaginal microbiome and STI test covering four common STIs [5][7]. Leighton Turner is identified in this coverage as cofounder and CSO [5].