Eleven firms have come together to provide early funding to a startup that plans to create a marketplace for genomic data for use in data-driven medicine by employing blockchain technology.
Nebula Genomics, which has locations in San Francisco and Boston, said Wednesday that it had raised $4.3 million in seed funding from Arch Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital Partners, Khosla Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Mayfield, Great Point Ventures, Windham Venture Partners, Hemi Ventures, Mirae Asset, Hikma Ventures and Heartbeat Labs.
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The company’s aim is to use blockchain and other technologies to enable people to control their genomic data and securely share it with researchers, in order to address ongoing privacy and security concerns among consumers that have been a barrier to more widespread sharing. Nebula is partnering with Veritas Genetics to use Arvados, its open-source platform for storing, sharing and analyzing genomic data that currently stands at more than 20 petabytes, or 20 million gigabytes. Arvados is described as a distributed biomedical data storage and computing platform used by researchers in industry and academia.
“Privacy and security issues are on everyone’s mind, and blockchain is a promising way to address both,” Veritas CEO Mirza Cifric said in a statement. “As our own database grows to many petabytes, together with the Nebula team we are taking the lead in our industry to protect the privacy of consumers while enabling them to participate in research and benefit from the blockchain-based marketplace Nebula is building.”
Nebula is not alone in applying blockchain technology to medical research. Last month, New York-based Embleema emerged from stealth mode to launch a blockchain-based health record system that will also allow patients to securely store their data and receive compensation via cryptocurrency when they choose to share it with healthcare stakeholders. Meanwhile, also last month and also in New York, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai opened the Center for Biomedical Blockchain Research, with the aim of developing partnerships with companies looking to apply the technology to clinical medicine and biomedical research. Blockchain technology emerged from the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and consists of a digital ledger that records and stores transactions in a way that is both verifiable and secure.
In Nebula’s marketplace, consumers will be able to receive compensation for their health data via a cryptocurrency token-based payment system that the company is creating as a way to address concerns about the practice of medical and genomic data brokers selling their health data to third parties. Users can store and manage their own data using the Arvados software after their genomes are sequenced and choose how much of their data is shared and with whom, with security and transparency provided through blockchain.
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