INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Another sizeable cash injection for big data biotech: Sophia Genetics has announced a $77M Series E funding round, bringing its total raised
to $140M since the business was founded back in 2011.
The company, which applies AI to DNA sequencing to enable what it dubs &data-driven
medicine&, last closed a $30M Series Din fall 2017.
The Series E was led by Generation Investment Management
Also investing: European private equity firm, Idinvest Partners
Existing investors, including Balderton Capital and Alychlo, also participated in the round.
When we last spoke to Sophia Genetics it had
around 350 hospitals linked via its SaaS platform, and was then adding around 10 new hospitals per month.
Nowit says its Sophia AI platform
is being used by more than 850 hospitals across 77 countries, and it claims to have supported the diagnosis of more than 300,000
patients.
The basic idea is to improve diagnoses by enabling closer collaboration and knowledge sharing between hospitals via the Sophia AI
platform, with an initialfocus on oncology, hereditary cancer, metabolic disorders, pediatrics and cardiology.
Expert (human) insights
across the network of hospital users are used to collectively enhance genomic diagnostics, and push towards predictive analysis, by feeding
and training AI algorithms intended to enhance the reading and analysis ofDNA sequencing data.
Sophia Genetics describes its approach as the
&democratization& of DNA sequencing expertise.
Commenting on the Series E in a statement, Lilly Wollman, co-head of Generation growth equity
team said: &We believe that leveraging genetic sequencing and advanced digital analysis will enable a more sustainable healthcare system
Sophia Genetics is a leader in the preventive and personalized medicine revolution, enabling the development of targeted therapeutics,
thereby vastly improving health outcomes
We admire Sophia Genetics not just for its differentiated analytics capability across genomic and radiomic data, but also for its
exceptional team and culture&.
The new funding will be put towards further expanding the number of hospitals using Sophia Genetics&
technology, and also on growing its headcount with a plan to ramp up hiring in the US especially.
The Swiss-founded firm is nowco-based in
Lausanne and Boston, US.
In another recent developmentthe company addedradiomics capabilitiesto its platform last year, allowing for what it
describes as &aprediction of the evolution of a tumour&, which it suggests can help inform a physician choice of treatment for the
