Keep your teeth.
For life.
Cavities and gum disease start in the chemistry of your mouth long before you feel them. RAW reads that chemistry — not just which bacteria are there — so you can catch the risk early and act on it.
By the time it hurts, the damage is already done.
Tooth decay and gum disease are the two most common chronic diseases on earth — and both are nearly silent in the stages where they're easiest to reverse. You don't feel a cavity forming. You don't feel the inflammation that turns into bleeding gums, then receding gums, then tooth loss.
Your dentist can see damage that has already happened. RAW looks one step upstream — at the microbial chemistry that drives the damage — so you can change course while it's still cheap and easy to fix.
The most common disease on Earth is in your mouth.
This isn't a niche wellness concern. According to the World Health Organization's Global Burden of Disease study, untreated tooth decay is the single most common health condition of any kind on the planet — ranked ahead of more than 300 other diseases. It is so widespread it's frequently called the most common infectious disease of humankind. Roughly 2.5 billion people are living with untreated cavities right now, and once you add gum disease and other oral conditions, the number reaches nearly 3.7 billion — close to half of everyone alive.
None of this is bad luck. Tooth decay is fundamentally a microbial disease: acid-producing bacteria ferment the sugars you eat and bathe the enamel in acid faster than saliva can repair it. The key players — like Streptococcus mutans — can even pass between people, which is why caries is so often described as an infectious, transmissible condition. Gum disease runs on the same engine: the community tips toward inflammatory pathogens, the gums react, and the damage compounds. In both cases the disease is written in the microbes and chemistry of your mouth long before there's a hole to drill or blood in the sink — which is exactly the window RAW is built to see into.
Everyone else counts the bacteria. We measure what they're doing.
Most oral tests sequence your saliva and hand you a census — a list of which microbes live in your mouth. That's a start, but a name on a list doesn't tell you whether those microbes are actively harming your teeth today. RAW reads the chemistry they produce — the acids that dissolve enamel, the sulfur compounds and inflammatory byproducts behind bleeding gums. Chemistry is the part that actually damages your mouth, and it's the part almost no other test measures.
A list of who's there
Sequencing tells you which bacteria are present and in what proportion. Useful — but presence isn't activity. Two people with the same bacteria can have very different risk depending on what those bacteria are producing.
What they're actually making
We pair the microbial profile with a readout of 150 metabolic markers — the live chemical signals of decay and gum inflammation. That's the difference between knowing a fire risk exists and seeing the smoke.
The microbes that cause the damage — and the chemistry that proves it.
Your report covers the organisms dentistry has spent decades tying to decay and gum disease, alongside the metabolic markers that show whether those organisms are active right now.
Cavity risk
Acid-producing bacteria that dissolve enamel
Bleeding-gum risk
The pathogens behind inflammation & periodontitis
150 metabolic markers
The active chemical signals of risk
RAW analyzes over 100,000 microbial and molecular data points from a single saliva sample to build your risk picture. The result is a clear, plain-language report — not a data dump — with the specific markers that are elevated and what to do about them.
Beneath the bacteria: your oral phageome.
There's a layer of your mouth almost no consumer test ever mentions — and it may be the most important one. Your saliva teems with bacteriophages: viruses that infect bacteria. They are the most abundant biological entities on Earth, they outnumber the bacteria they prey on, and in your mouth they act as the hidden regulators of the entire community — deciding which bacteria thrive and which are kept in check. Change the phages, and you change the bacteria. Change the bacteria, and you change the chemistry that protects or destroys your teeth.
For RAW, this isn't borrowed science. RAW's founder was part of the team behind one of the first comprehensive characterizations of the human oral phageome — a foundational paper in the field. That work showed the oral virome is dominated by a stable, deeply personal population of phages, and that these phages carry a vast reservoir of functional genes (over 120,000 virulence-factor homologs) capable of reshaping how the bacterial community behaves.
Evidence of a robust resident bacteriophage population revealed through analysis of the human salivary virome
Pride DT, Salzman J, Haynes M, Rohwer F, Davis-Long C, White RA III, Loomer P, Armitage GC, Relman DA. The ISME Journal 6, 915–926 (2012). doi:10.1038/ismej.2011.169
Built by a molecular lab, not a marketing team.
RAW Molecular Systems is founded and run by a working molecular scientist and academic research group with a long record of peer-reviewed microbiome, metabolomics, and virome research — including foundational work on the oral phageome (above). The pipeline that reads your sample uses that same class of computational and molecular tooling, brought out of the lab and priced for everyday people.
Saliva sample
You spit into the tube at home. No swabs of the dentist, no blood, no clinic visit.
Microbes + metabolites
We profile the microbial community and read 150 metabolic markers from the same sample.
Risk analysis
Over 100,000 data points are turned into decay and gum-disease risk signals.
Your action plan
Plain-language results with the markers that matter and clear next steps.
From your mailbox to your action plan in four steps.
Order online
Your $50 kit ships to your door. One flat price — no subscription required.
Collect at home
Provide a quick saliva sample — about five minutes, no needles, no appointment.
Mail it back
Seal it in the prepaid return mailer and drop it in the post. We handle the rest.
Get your results
Your secure online report is ready in a few weeks, with clear next steps.
Lab-grade insight. Everyday price.
Comparable oral microbiome tests run $100 to $200 — a once-in-a-lifetime purchase most people put off. At $50, RAW is something you can actually build a habit around: test the whole family, and retest as your routine changes.
Your mouth is a window into the rest of your body.
A growing body of research has linked the balance of the oral microbiome to conditions well beyond the teeth and gums. Testing your oral health is one accessible way to stay ahead of a system that touches the whole body. These are areas of active research and association — not diagnoses.
Good things to know before you order.
Is this a medical diagnosis? +
What makes this different from other oral microbiome tests? +
How do I collect the sample? +
How long until I get results? +
What do I actually get back? +
Can my whole family use it? +
How often should I retest? +
Is my data private? +
Catch it early. Keep your teeth for life.
One saliva sample. 150 metabolic markers. A clear picture of your decay and gum-disease risk — before you ever feel a thing. $50, delivered to your door.
Order your test — $50 →Questions first? Get in touch.