St. John’s-based Sequence Bio has announced the close of a $3 million seed round, less than a year after the company raised $1 million from Killick Capital and Pelorus Venture Capital.
The seed financing was led by Silicon-Valley based Data Collective (DCVC). DCVC was joined in the financing by existing investors Killick Capital, Venture NL, and Klister Credit Corp.
“DCVC is one of the premier venture capital firms that invests in entrepreneurs building transformative companies powered by deep compute and big data, and its principals have supported people seeking to disrupt industries for over twenty years, helping create tens of billions of dollars of wealth,” said Sequence Bio co-founder and COO Chris Gardner. “We look forward to the new relationship with DCVC and we are proud to have earned the continued confidence of our existing investors. We believe this is the first investment by a Silicon Valley venture capital fund into Atlantic Canada.”
Sequence Bio said it is building the world’s most powerful big data resource for drug discovery through a 100,000 person genome sequencing project in the Newfoundland and Labrador genetic isolate founder population. Newfoundland and Labrador is home to a unique, homogenous founder population of 500,000 people associated with the world’s highest incidence of numerous rare mendelian conditions and complex diseases. The province also has a strong electronic health record system.
“Building a company that can both impact drug discovery and patient care in a meaningful way is important to all of us at Sequence Bio. Our vision is better, safer drugs that deliver more healthcare value, and this investment will accelerate our already rapid growth,” said Sequence Bio co-founder and CEO Tyler Wish. “With this unique network of talent, advisors and expertise in big data supporting us, we have never been better positioned for success in drug discovery and precision medicine.”
The company is partnering with the region’s entire healthcare network for the 100,000 person genome project, and is working on creating a real-world data set that integrates a deep stack of multi-omics and longitudinal clinical information.
Photo credit David Howells
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