Spoiler alert: Hangover ‘cures’ don’t work, observes Dr. Zachary Abbott. If you’ve overindulged the night before, Gatorade, herbal remedies and B vitamins won’t stop you feeling like death warmed up the next morning. But a shot of ZBiotics just might.
Which doesn’t mean you can down a bottle of Jack Daniels or 10 pints of beer consequence-free, says Abbott (catchphrase: ‘We’re into science, not science fiction’), but “If you drink ZBiotics before you drink alcohol, you wake up the next day feeling better than you would have felt otherwise.’
So how does it work?
The liver is pretty good at producing enzymes that break down alcohol into acetaldehyde and then convert it into acetate (basically vinegar). However, the gut—where some alcohol is also metabolized—does not do this quite as efficiently, says Abbott. Which is where ZBiotics comes in.
Founded by Abbott and Stephen Lamb in 2016, the San Francisco-based startup has engineered a microbe to express the enzyme that breaks down acetaldehyde by transferring said trait from the liver into a strain of bacteria (B. subtilis ZB183).
Rather than building a costly precision fermentation business to produce, purify, and sell the enzyme, ZBiotics sells the probiotic bacteria (via a shelf-stable shot sold direct-to-consumer), which then expresses the protein inside the gut.
