What You Should Know: - Pleno, a multi-omics startup, is emerging out of stealth with a $15M Pre-Series A financing and Greg Lucier as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Founded by Pieter van Rooyen, a well-known biotech engineer who built and sold his last company, Edico Genome, to Illumina for $100M. Edico's Dragen technology has become a staple in genetics research. - Pleno's Hypercoding technology has the potential to revolutionize biological target detection for
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Seven Bridges, USP, Google Cloud to Build A Brazilian Reference Genome
What You Should Know: - Seven Bridges, a bioinformatics ecosystem provider, announced it is collaborating with the University of São Paulo (USP) and Google Cloud, as well as the Associação Genomas Brasil (Brazil Genome Association), to assist the DNA do Brasil (DNABr) project in building a reference genome that represents the genetic diversity of the Brazilian population. - The joint effort will advance unbiased precision medicine for underrepresented populations in Brazil through the
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Blackrock Neurotech Acquires Spatial Computing Firm MindX
What You Should Know: Blackrock Neurotech, a provider of Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology, has acquired the spatial computing software house, MindX. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. - MindX’s spatial computing technology is used to recognize and interpret the movement of objects in physical space, and in combination with Blackrock’s BCI technology, will unlock additional levels of interaction between patients and their physical
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Potential of Implementing Polygenic Risk Scores in Healthcare Systems
The promise of personalized medicine is a world in which interventions, screening, and therapeutics are targeted to those most likely to get the disease. Polygenic risk scores will help society reach this ambition by accurately assessing the contribution that one’s DNA makes to disease risk. When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal,’ he captured the essential concept of equality on which the US Constitution is based. Although no one would
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Reema Health Secures $8M for Personalized, Community-Based Health Platform
What You Should Know: - Reema Health, a Minneapolis, MN-based community-based health technology platform raises $8M in seed funding led by MaC Venture Capital and DNA Capital. Combined with a previous $1.25 million pre-seed round and earlier preliminary investments, Reema’s has raised over $10 million to date. - Reema uses technology to power human relationships with the goal of improving health outcomes for people who are hardest to reach. Reema’s breakthrough health
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BillionToOne Raises $125M to Expand Genetic Testing Platform
What You Should Know: - BillionToOne, a next-generation molecular diagnostics company with a mission to create powerful and accurate tests that are accessible to all raises $125M in Series C funding co-led by Adams Street Partners and existing investor Hummingbird Ventures with significant participation from Baillie Gifford, Neotribe Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Civilization Ventures, Fifty Years VC, Pacific 8 Ventures, Time BioVentures, and Libertus Capital, among others. - This
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Why Mainstream Precision Medicine Hinges on Healthcare HPC Storage
The healthcare industry is experiencing a data deluge, and it shows no sign of slowing down. In 2020, estimates reported that healthcare data comprised a staggering 30% of the world’s total data volume; projections for 2025 bump that number up to 36%, a growth rate outpacing every other industry. This is promising news for precision medicine, the data-driven healthcare initiative that promotes the right treatment for the right patient at the right time. Precision (or personalized)
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Why Families Need the Closure Whole Genome Sequencing Provides
For medical practitioners expertly trained in the scientific methods of discovery, having a young patient with serious health complications from an undiagnosed condition is about as somber and frustrating as it gets. These feelings are only magnified for parents of the patient, especially when searching for a diagnosis can go on for years. This is the essence of what is known as the “diagnostic odyssey.” Honing in on a rare disease diagnosis involves thorough medical history evaluations,
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Meaningful Use of Genomics Requires Informatics Beyond EMRs
Electronic medical records (EMRs) are widely expected to serve as a cornerstone technology that drives the delivery of modern patient care. But can the EMR alone support all the informatics capabilities required by an ever-evolving healthcare industry? The rapid growth of precision medicine, particularly the use of genetic and genomic information during clinical decision making, is a compelling example that functionality beyond the EMR is required. Not only does genomic data represent a
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AMA Adds 3 Additional CPT Codes for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 Vaccine
What You Should Know: - The American Medical Association (AMA) announced the addition of three Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes for AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine. The American Medical Association (AMA) today announced that
the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) code set is
being updated by the CPT Editorial Panel to include immunization and
administration codes that are unique to the COVID-19 vaccine under development
by AstraZeneca and University of
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