PITCH PERFECT
Local companies give us their pitch. Up first, Patrick Short from Sano Genetics, a personalised medicine research platform putting the patient in the driving seat
What’s your pitch? We are a platform for genomics with privacy and transparency at its core. We help people discover more about themselves and get access to the latest findings in genomics, and give researchers access to patients and data needed to do transformational research. US, where I studied biology and mathematics. I moved over to Cambridge about five years ago for my PhD – that’s where I met my co- founders Charlotte Guzzo and William Jones. We were all doing our PhDs at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, one of the world-leading centres for genomics research, and discovered a common interest in entrepreneurship and new models for research that had the potential to be faster and more empowering to research participants. What makes you unique? We are trying to help solve one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century – making medicine more personalised. We have a radically different approach to most companies, which is based around data privacy and transparency. We provide research participants with full access to data and insights and our goal is to give researchers access to data and advanced analytics ten times faster and cheaper than What’s your background? I am originally from North Carolina in the
other alternatives. As a company, we are an interesting blend of deep science, machine learning and patient engagement. Biggest achievement so far? Growing our base of users from zero to more than 1,000 in less than a year. It was really exciting to see the MVP that we built getting people excited about participating in genomics research and learning more about their DNA. Biggest challenges? Reaching tens of thousands of users for our platform. In genomics and medical research, you need a lot of participants to do great science. As a science-driven company, we want to get to the point where we can facilitate transformational research; getting to the scale of participants to do that takes time and building trust with patient groups and other partners. Which individuals or companies are your biggest inspirations? I worked previously at Invitae, a genomics company in San Francisco – while I was there, the level of transparency that the leadership showed around the vision and mission for the company was really inspirational. It is something we are trying to do at Sano. We want to make sure that everyone – both within the company and outside of it – has ownership in the company
We are trying to help solve one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century – making medicine more personalised""
mission, understands what our goals are and has visibility with how we are conducting ourselves, particularly with regards to data privacy. Where do you want the business to be in five years? Our goal is to bring about personalised medicine using a model that empowers individuals, rather than exploits them. In five years, I would like to grow our base of participants to over 1 million people, and to be making significant strides toward data-driven personalised medicine in several major disease areas.
Find out more about Sano Genetics at sanogenetics.com
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