Google Ventures has been backing startups through its venture capital fund since 2009 and offers a pretty diverse range of services to entrepreneurs. Here’s a look at the eight healthcare and life science businesses among its portfolio companies spanning DNA analysis, accelerated drug development, and oncology analytics.
23andMe The startup has helped make personal genetics and DNA analysis much more accessible to consumers. The company, co-founded by Anne Wojsicki, offers DNA test kits that for $99 and a little saliva help people better understand what conditions they are at risk for developing, whether they are carriers for any diseases that they could unwittingly give to their children. It can also provide information on whether people’s genetic makeup makes them particularly sensitive to certain drugs. It also uses results from user queries, with their consent, to conduct in-house research.
Adimab has developed an antibody discovery engine that accelerates antibody drug discovery. Yeast biotechnologists Tillman U. Gerngross, CEO and K. Dane Wittrup co-founded the Lebanon, New Hampshire-based company, which has built an impressive list of collaboration partners including Merck, Roche, Genentech, Pfizer, Novartis, Eli Lilly, Biogen Idec, Novo Nordisk Gilead and Kyowa Hakko Kirin, among others.
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DNAnexus The bioinformatics company that provides DNA data management and analysis for sequencing centers and researchers was founded and is led by Andreas Sundquist. The Mountainview, California-based company provides data management support for next generation sequencing centers as well as next generation sequencing and analysis to researchers. Researchers can use ts platform to map genomes, find variants and mutations, visualize the data, and share that data with others. Its customers include academic researchers, big pharma, and clinical and diagnostic testing labs. It relies on Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud for its cloud computing needs. Sundquist told Wired magazine that his company makes it easy to take huge data sets, do all the data crunching, and come down with a list of genes impacted in a relatively short amount of time.
Flatiron Health Nathaniel Turner and Zachary Weinberg founded the software as a service company to offer oncology analytics that can provide useful insights to clinicians and drug developers based on their own oncology data. The goal is allow providers to track hundreds of metrics tied to cancer care, monitor adherence to national guidelines across their clinicians, match patients to clinical trials in real-time, and help them to ask questions using their data, according to its website.
Foundation Medicine has a personalized diagnostic test called Foundation One that analyzes tissue biopsies for irregularities across 280 genes that have some link to tumor growth. It is expected to have a significant impact on finding the right drugs for the right patients to help physicians make more informed treatment recommendations as well as screening candidates for clinical trials. As of January, about 700 oncologists had ordered the test, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Cambridge, Massachusetts company is led by Dr Michael Pellini, the CEO.
iPierian is a therapeutics company led by CEO Nancy Stagliano that’s using Noble Prize winning stem cell research to develop therapeutics for neurodegenerative conditions. The technology involves converting cells taken from a biopsy of the arm for example, converting them into stem cells and then converting those cells into brain cells. It’s lead indications are to combat Alzheimer’s Disease.
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At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Predilytics is a healthcare data analytics platform founded by Chris Conloian. The Boston-based company works with payers and providers. Its platform uses data sets to create their own specific predictive model and analytic rule. The company’s approach is similar to what has been done by financial service and marketing companies, using computer science to provide automated analysis to continually create new insights.
Transcriptic is a biotechnology company that produces cloud-based lab automation software. Max Hodak founded the company to make basic lab work more efficient by having robots carry it out for life science companies. He purchased industry standard machines, robots and incubators from big pharma companies, stripped them and wrote custom programs that send messages from the Web to give them lab work orders from customers, according to PandoDaily.
