Ultima Genomics Emerges From Stealth Mode

<p class&equals;"typography-module--paragraph---kHwl"><strong>NEWARK<&sol;strong> – Ultima Genomics emerged from stealth mode with a new high-throughput&comma; low-cost sequencing platform that delivers the &dollar;100 genome&period; Ultima’s goal is to unleash a new era in genomics-driven research and healthcare&comma; and it has secured approximately &dollar;600 million in backing from leading investors including General Atlantic&comma; Andreessen Horowitz&comma; D1 Capital&comma; Khosla Ventures&comma; Lightspeed&comma; Marius Nacht&comma; aMoon&comma; Playground Global&comma; and Founders Fund&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p class&equals;"typography-module--paragraph---kHwl">The first scientific results from leading research institutes using the platform for whole-genome sequencing&comma; single-cell sequencing&comma; and cancer epigenetics will be presented at AGBT in Florida next week with initial data published this week&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<ul>&NewLine;<li>Data from over 200 whole human genomes&comma; generated at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard&comma; which was the company’s first early access site&comma; in addition to a co-developed update to Broad’s open-sourced GATK toolkit and the first demonstration of single cell RNA-seq methodologies from Joshua Levin and Aviv Regev&comma; will be shared at AGBT&period; Pre-prints are available on BioRxiv&comma; and reference human genome data and software will be made available to the community&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<li>A four million cell genome-wide PerturbSeq study&comma; performed by Jonathan Weissman’s team at The Whitehead Institute and pending publication&comma; demonstrates immediate usability for Ultima’s platform in large-scale single-cell studies&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<li>Initial clinical evaluation data&comma; as well as Hi-C genome structure data at an unprecedented resolution&comma; generated in collaboration with researchers at Baylor College of Medicine&comma; will be shared at AGBT&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<li>Whole genome methylation landscape of pre-cancerous tissues&comma; generated in collaboration with Michael Snyder’s lab at the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University&comma; to be released as a pre-print on BioRxiv&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<li>Multiple demonstrations of the ability to quantify circulating tumor by deep whole genome sequencing of cell-free DNA&comma; performed in collaboration with researchers from Cancer Research UK and New York Genome Center&comma; will be presented at the conference&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<&sol;ul>&NewLine;<p class&equals;"typography-module--paragraph---kHwl">Biology’s complexity and dynamic nature has created a virtually unlimited need for genomic information&period; Currently&comma; routine adoption of sequencing for research and diagnosis is severely constrained by cost&period; Over the last five years&comma; Ultima Genomics has developed a fundamentally new sequencing architecture designed to scale beyond conventional approaches&comma; including completely different approaches to flow cell engineering&comma; sequencing chemistry&comma; and machine learning&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p class&equals;"typography-module--paragraph---kHwl">&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;DNA is nature’s storage media and the instruction set for every living organism&comma; yet with current technologies&comma; we can’t access that information at the scale needed to truly understand complex biology” said Gilad Almogy&comma; Ultima Genomics’ founder and Chief Executive Officer&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Our architecture is intended for radical scaling&comma; and the &dollar;100 genome is merely the first example of what it can deliver&period; We are committed to continuously drive down the cost of genomic information until it is routinely used in every part of the healthcare system&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p class&equals;"typography-module--paragraph---kHwl">&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Scientists and clinicians continuously make tradeoffs between the breadth&comma; depth&comma; and frequency of genomic information they collect&comma;” Doron Lipson&comma; Chief Scientific Officer of Ultima Genomics explains&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;By overcoming the limitations of conventional next-generation sequencing technologies&comma; researchers can now design experiments and clinical assays that were previously impossible&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p class&equals;"typography-module--paragraph---kHwl">&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Ultima Genomics’ architecture will revolutionize sequencing and take what we can do to a whole new level&comma;” said Michael Snyder&comma; Director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;The ability to sequence many thousands of genomes and epigenomes will transform diagnostics and disease risk prediction&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;

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