Health IT, Startups

DNA testing for geneology finds a match in StartUp Health-GE program

It’s only been a few months since StartUp Health and GE’s three year entrepreneur program […]

It’s only been a few months since StartUp Health and GE’s three year entrepreneur program got underway, but that hasn’t stopped Arpeggi, one of the program’s 13 companies, from being acquired.

Arpeggi, a big data, genomic sequencing analysis business with a name inspired by the CSO’s fondness for Radiohead is the target of Gene by Gene — one of the pioneers of direct-to-consumer DNA testing for geneology, according to a company statement. It covers a wide range of genetic tests from determining paternity to tracing customers’ origins and evaluating people for genetic disorders from inherited diseases. It is absorbing Arpeggi and including its management team. The financial details weren’t disclosed.

With Arpeggi’s set of data management and analysis tools, Gene by Gene says it can further reduce the cost and increase the speed of genetic testing. That would make its tests more accessible to a wider customer base.

Despite the acquisition, David Mittelman said in an email that the company will remain in the program.

“Both Startup Health and GE are still with us as investors and are therefore quite incentivized to help us further succeed,” he said. “GE’s real interest is in consumer health so the merger aligns us more closely with GE’s interests since at  [Gene by Gene] we will be developing a lot of new consumer products.”

Earlier this year Arpeggi developed a Genome Comparison and Analytic Testing platform, a free community-driven platform for evaluating the performance of next-generation sequencing data analysis methods.

Arpeggi’s team and technology platform will be incorporated into Gene by Gene, according to a company statement. Its founders will join Gene By Gene’s management team. Arpeggi’s Nir Leibovich became Chief Business Officer, Jason Wang is now Chief Technology Officer and David Mittelman, is now the Chief Scientific Officer.

In response to emailed questions Wang said Arpeggi’s founders honed their skills in the gaming business where the data management requirements are much bigger than in genomics. The origins of its genomic analysis tools can be traced back to Mittelman’s lab at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute.

“We are leveraging the latest distributed computing, cloud and database technologies as well as experience from our past startup MarketZero, which was sold to Zynga in 2011,” said Wang. “Our goal is to abstract away the technical details of sequencing, technology, and bioinformatics — making genomics easy for everyone.”

The profile of genetic testing is set to grow quite a bit. Earlier this week 23andMe announced the start of a TV ad campaign. The direct-to-consumer genetic testing market alone is projected to grow to $233.7 million by 2018. If you include the clinical side, the regulatory landscape, testing technology, reimbursement physician adoption, bioinformatics as well as consumer demand are driving growth.

Photo credit: Freedigitalphotos user dream designs]

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