Veracyte Inc. revealed plans to buy C2i Genomics Inc. at the J.P. Morgan Health Care Conference in San Francisco on Jan. 8, a move that will significantly expand its portfolio of cancer diagnostic and monitoring assays. The terms include $70 million in Veracyte shares to be paid at closing plus an addition $25 million payable in cash or Veracyte shares over the next two years if C2i achieves certain performance milestones.
After five years and 350,000 hours of DNA sequencing, the UK Biobank has opened up access Nov. 30 to the whole genome sequences of half a million people who volunteered to give samples 15 years ago.
Launching a company based on knowledge that “the fundamental principle that most people hold to be true is off by a trillion” is a rare opportunity, said Jake Rubens, co-founder and president of Quotient Therapeutics Inc., a company that emerged from stealth this week, backed by two years of platform development and a $50 million investment from Flagship Pioneering.
Launching a company based on knowledge that “the fundamental principle that most people hold to be true is off by a trillion” is a rare opportunity, said Jake Rubens, co-founder and president of Quotient Therapeutics Inc., a company that emerged from stealth this week, backed by two years of platform development and a $50 million investment from Flagship Pioneering.
Function Oncology Inc. emerged from stealth on April 12 with the announcement of a $28 million series A financing that will continue support development of its CRISPR-enabled platform to profile cancer in patient-specific detail. The platform goes beyond next-generation sequencing to measure gene function, potentially allowing identification of new therapeutic targets and better matching of available therapies to vulnerabilities in an individual’s tumors.
Illumina Inc. released Connected Insights in a beta version for the U.S., following its commercial release in other selected countries. Connected Insights, an assay-agnostic, cloud-based software designed to streamline interpretation and reporting across next-generation sequencing (NGS) types, was initially developed for somatic oncology applications, the system will shortly also support whole genome sequencing for rare diseases.
Complete Genomics Inc. launched a new line of genetic sequencers designed to decode DNA in greater quantities – and at a lower price point – than existing sequencing tools. The new products could signal a new era of more affordable testing, leading to wider availability and the potential to fulfill the long-desired promise of precision medicine.
Cajal Neuroscience Inc., a startup seeking new targets to use in medicines for neurodegeneration, has launched with the completion of a $96 million series A financing led by The Column Group and Lux Capital. The company, inspired by the pioneering work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, is focused on the "mechanistic, spatial and temporal complexity of neurodegeneration" to determine "how, where and when different mechanisms contribute to disease."
Nested Therapeutics Inc. emerged from stealth, revealing $125 million in equity funding and plans to bring precision oncology to the next level by probing the genomics and structural biology of key cancer targets more deeply than before, in an ambitious bid to find new driver mutations, new druggable pockets, and new chemistry that will expand the current arsenal of targeted therapies.
Genomics is moving out of the research lab to become a routine element of health care, particularly in oncology to detect gene variants that indicate a patient will respond to a targeted cancer drug, and in the diagnosis of rare diseases.