Collectively rare diseases are anything but rare – they impact 30 million people in the US and ten times that amount globally. And 1 in 3 children suffering from a rare disease will not survive beyond the age of five.
One of the biggest challenges facing clinicians is making a quick, accurate diagnosis – on average patients visit eight physicians and receive two to three misdiagnoses before being correctly diagnosed, a process that takes US patients around 7.6 years, and is often referred to
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Illumina
Pleno Secures $40M to Disrupt Sequencing Market, Scale Multi-omics
What You Should Know:
- Pleno, Inc, a multi-omic instrument platform company revolutionizing biological target detection for clinical testing and biomedical research raises $40M in Series A funding led by Deerfield Management and Foresite Capital.
- The funding will accelerate the development of Pleno’s Hypercoding™ instrument platform, called RAPTOR ™, which is slated for early customer access in 2023 and full availability in 2024. Release below
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Healthcare & Life Science M&A Activity Plummets 1H’22
What You Should Know:
- The index of Healthcare & Life Science equities tracked by Stout was down 16.8% in Q2 2022, which was in line with the S&P 500 decline of 16.4%.
- Healthcare & Life Science M&A activity plummeted to 338 deals in Q2 2022 versus 535 in Q2 2021 and a record 565 deals in Q4 2021. The report reveals credit markets likely to tighten, but a healthy level of M&A is expected to continue in the growing and defensive healthcare sector.
Key Trends and
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Genetics Startup Pleno Launches Out of Stealth with $15M
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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Illumina and Syapse Partner on Biomarker Testing Research Across Oncology Practices
What You Should Know:
- Syapse, a real-world evidence company that informs cancer care, announced a partnership with Illumina aimed at assessing the real-world uptake and actionability of comprehensive genomic profiling in the community oncology health system setting.
- Together, the two companies will work to better understand biomarker testing patterns among clinicians, which have become foundational in identifying treatment options for cancer patients. The insights gleaned from this
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Illumina, Sequoia Capital China Launches Genomics Incubator in China
What You Should Know:
- Illumina and Sequoia Capital will collaborate to build an ecosystem for life science startup companies advancing breakthrough applications in genomics.
- Sequoia Capital China Intelligent Healthcare Genomics Incubator, Powered by Illumina will leverage the expertise of Illumina for Startups in building genomics companies with the unparalleled track record of Illumina Accelerator in San Francisco Bay Area and Cambridge, UK.
- Sequoia Capital China will dedicate to
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LetsGetChecked Nabs $71M for Direct-to-Consumer At-Home Health Testing
LetsGetChecked, a leading direct-to-consumer at-home health testing and insights
company, today announced the closing of $71 million in its Series C round of
financing co-led by Illumina Ventures and HLM Venture Partners. The round also
includes new investors Deerfield, CommonFund Capital, and Angeles Investments
and existing investors Transformation Capital, Optum Ventures, and Qiming
Venture Partners USA. Nick Naclerio, Founding Partner at Illumina Ventures and
Steven Tolle, Partner at HLM
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Microsoft, Adaptive, Providence Partner to Decode COVID-19 Immune Response
What You Should Know:
- Microsoft and Adaptive Biotechnologies have expanded their partnership to map the human immune response to COVID-19 and advance our understanding of the disease.
- Data from this study will be made available through an open-access portal to help researchers, public health organizations and industry improve diagnostics, help triage patients based on the immune response to the disease, and inform vaccine discovery for COVID-19.
- Other industry leaders including
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Health Data Privacy: Why Eroding Public Trust Harms Medical Research
Using Data Privacy to Empower Health Research
The importance of data security and data privacy policies have recently come under scrutiny due to revelations around Google’s Project Nightingale. The initiative with Ascension, the nation’s largest nonprofit health system, granted Google access to medical records of more than 50 million individuals in 21 states and may hinder the trajectory of health discovery by eroding “consumer” trust.
While historically it might have been a safe harbor to
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Sun Genomics Delivers Personalized Probiotics In Only 6 Weeks to Address Gut Health Issues
- Sun Genomics launches personalized probiotic solution to identify and address individual gut health issues to improve the health of millions of Americans. - Solution delivers precise probiotic formula required for each person to address their own unique gut health issues in just six weeks. - Sun Genomics Floré includes a kit to collect a micro-stool sample, a full microbiome analysis report, and a 90-day supply of precision probiotics.Sun Genomics today launched the first customized
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