This article has been corrected to reflect the appropriate conversion rate to US dollars.
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Population Genetics Technologies has raised £3.8 million (approximately $7.5 million) in a first round of funding, the company said Wednesday.
The Series A round included investments from Auriga Partners, Noble Fund Managers, and Compass Genetics Investors.
Cambridge, UK-based PGT was started with seed funding from the Wellcome Trust Technology Transfer Division to develop and market new technologies for population studies.
Sam Eletr, one of PGT's co-founders, said that the company's large-scale population genetics method “if successful, will be a huge leap forward, as it is expected to reduce significantly the cost of using any sequencing technology, however efficient, that can analyze only one genome at a time.”
The firm said its technology could “enable users to discover shared gene variants characteristic of a particular disorder or a specific response to drugs without the need to sequence separately every individual genome in a particular population.”
PGT also announced that it has appointed Mel Kronick as CEO and a member of the board of directors. Kronick is a former division R&D manager for both Agilent Technologies and Applied Biosystems, with broad experience in the DNA sequencing and microarray fields.