Genome sequencing company Ultima Genomics has occur out of stealth and announced $600 million in financing. Founded in 2016 by its Israeli CEO Gilad Almogy, the enterprise has 350 staff including 50 in Israel at advancement centers in Rehovot and Hod Hasharon, and remarkably has managed to avert any leaks of info from its employees, investors and growth centers.

The organization has now uncovered that it has created a sequencing machine, which it statements, backed up by research set to be posted in major scientific periodicals, enables genome sequencing for $100, compared with the $500-600 it charges utilizing its rival Illumina (Nasdaq: ILMN). In addition, Ultima Genomics claims that its genomic sequencing is more quickly and deeper – in other phrases, it supplies additional facts about the genome, a lot more rapidly.

The positive aspects of these advancements, which are authorized through patents that the company has not nonetheless disclosed, are generally in two instructions. By way of this technologies, the company estimates and hopes, it will be feasible to achieve genome sequencing even down to solitary cells, and as a result diagnose diseases even before than at existing, primarily most cancers. In addition, sequencing that is more cost-effective, faster and richer in data, will let a lot a lot quicker development in jobs that look at the genetics of the real morbidity of substantial quantities of individuals, in order to map the genes associated in numerous diseases.

Sources at Ultima Genomics say that the purpose for the secrecy in excess of the many years was the desire to attain the issue where by the company could confirm its product, in advance of making any bulletins. The company also favored not to stir up its rivals, primarily Illumina.

Ultima Genomics CEO and founder Gilad Almogy is a graduate of the IDF’s Talpiot science and leadership application. Almogy is currently resident in the US. He was a senior vice president at Used Resources right before founding solar power company Cogenra Photo voltaic in 2009, which was acquired by SunPower in 2015. In late 2016, Almogy founded Ultima.

Almogy reported, “DNA is nature’s storage media and the instruction established for each residing organism, nevertheless with present technologies, we won’t be able to accessibility that information and facts at the scale wanted to certainly have an understanding of complex biology. Our architecture is supposed for radical scaling, and the $100 genome is simply the first illustration of what it can supply. We are dedicated to consistently travel down the price of genomic data until it is routinely applied in just about every part of the healthcare method.”




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Ultima Genomics CSO Doron Lipson added, “Researchers and clinicians continually make tradeoffs between the breadth, depth, and frequency of genomic information they gather. By overcoming the limitations of common following-era sequencing technologies, researchers can now layout experiments and medical assays that ended up beforehand difficult.”

One of the first investors in Ultima Genomics was Israeli billionaire and Verify Level founder Marius Nacht, who is also a graduate of the IDF’s Talpiot method. Nqcht established the aMoon healthtech and daily life science investment fund, at first investing his individual property ahead of becoming an independent fund, which in modern decades elevated a $750 million expansion fund. aMoon has also invested in Ultima Genomics.

Other investors in Ultima Genomics consist of D1 Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Standard Atlantic, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed, Playground Worldwide, and Founders Fund.

Full disclosure: Marius Nacht is the former lifestyle lover of Anat Agmon, component of the controlling shareholders in “Globes.” They are involved in a individual and financial dispute

Printed by Globes, Israel business enterprise news – en.globes.co.il – on June 2, 2022.

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