NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute today announced that spin-off firm 14M Genomics will receive £12.5 million ($19.7 million) in equity financing from investment firm Syncona Partners to develop oncology diagnostic and treatment services.
14M Genomics will combine genomic and clinical data sets for major cancers, which will enable clinicians to stratify patients to better inform diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.
The firm said in a statement that its medical and bioinformatics teams are building a web portal-based clinical genomic data resource for future diagnostic services and it is establishing collaborations with leading academic centers around blood and solid tissue cancers, where there are strong indicators that cancer genome biology can help oncologists determine patient prognosis and guide treatment. The firm also intends to collaborate with pharmaceutical partners to provide genomic services in the study of investigational drugs, informed by discoveries in cancer gene pathways.
"Our partnership with the Sanger Institute provides world-class resources that few start-up companies could access," Andrew Sandham, executive chairman of 14M Genomics, said in a statement. "[It] is proving a valuable gateway to access large clinical studies in cancer across Europe, at the scale and quality necessary to build medically useful clinical genomic datasets."
Hinxton, UK-based 14M Genomics was founded by leaders of the Sanger Institute Cancer Genome Project and offers sequencing and analytical tools to reveal associations between tumor genomics and patient outcomes.