PopGenTech

PGT Awarded NHS Grant to Fund Pharmacogenetic Study on Patient Response to Breast Cancer Chemotherapy

Frank Massam — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:42:35 +0000

Population Genetics technologies (PGT) Ltd, a privately owned company based in Cambridge, UK today announced that it has been awarded a grant from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) as part of the Institute’s Invention for Innovation (i4i) Programme.

The i4i Programme provides investment in, and improved identification of, promising healthcare technologies in order to accelerate the development of new healthcare products for the 21st century. The i4i programme funds translational research, extending between basic research and pre-clinical trials, or health technology assessments.

PGT has developed proprietary technologies that will both dramatically reduce the costs of performing large-scale population studies on Next Generation Sequencing platforms and also allow the detection and characterization of rare allelic variations in disease phenotypes. The company believes that these technologies will have a significant impact on discovery, biomarker identification, diagnostic and personalized medicine workflows.

The NIHR funded study will use PGT’s technologies to assess the link between rare sequence variants in 1000 patient genomes and response to a range of chemotherapeutic agents.

Commenting on the award Mel Kronick, President and CEO of PGT said, ”We are extremely pleased to have been awarded this grant which recognizes the potential of our technologies to have a major clinical impact over the coming years. PGT intends to use this study to demonstrate the value of its approach in identifying, before treatment, which patients in any given population are likely to respond favourably or adversely to a given drug regime. PGT’s technologies also have potential applications in determining, with high confidence, predisposition to many disease states.”

Contact

Dr Mel Kronick

President and Chief Executive Officer

Population Genetics technologies Ltd

Babraham Research Campus

Cambridgeshire

UK, CB22 3AT

www.popgentech.com

Phone: 01223 497 350

Mobile: 07795 564 905

Email: mel.kronick@popgentech.com

Contact

Dr Mel Kronick
President and Chief Executive Officer
Population Genetics technologies Ltd
Babraham Research Campus
Cambridgeshire
UK, CB22 3AT

Phone: 01223 497 350
Mobile: 07795 564 905
Email: mel.kronick@popgentech.com

Common and rare variants in multifactorial susceptibility to common disease

Robert Osborne — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:10:40 +0000

In a perspective article published in Nature Genetics, Sir Walter Bodmer and Carolina Bonilla argue that rare variants make a large contribution to the multifactorial inheritance of common diseases. They also point to two areas where studies of rare and common variants can intersect. First, they suggest that common variants might act as modifiers of rare variants, and second that genes for which common variants are identified should be considered candidates for functionally relevant rare variants. They conclude that the availability of highly efficient re-sequencing technology is critical in order to meet the challenge of identifying rare variants in disease versus control populations.

PGT Appoints New VP of Business Development

Mel Kronick — Sun, 24 May 2009 23:01:25 +0000

Population Genetics Technologies (PGT) Ltd today announced the appointment of Dr Frank Massam as Vice President of Business Development. The move follows the recent announcement of a £2,000,000 second tranche of Series A funding to further develop and commercialize PGT’s suite of proprietary technologies.

Massam has previously held senior Business Development positions with Incyte Genomics, Pharmagene Ltd and was responsible for Strategic Planning and New Business Development at Agilent Technologies Inc.

Commenting on the appointment Massam said, “I am delighted to be joining PGT at this most exciting time of its development. The technologies and the team that PGT has been able to put together in a short space of time are truly outstanding and I believe the company’s impact on discovery, diagnostic and research workflows will be significant. I am looking forward very much to helping plot the commercial course of the company as it introduces and enables economical, large-scale population studies allowing the detection and characterization of rare allelic variants”

Mel Kronick, President and CEO of PGT added, “We were recently able to secure the second tranche of our Series A funding by proving the feasibility, scalability and applicability of our proprietary technologies. The next phase of our growth will include pre-commercial assessments of potential markets, applications, business models and partners. The PGT Board and I are delighted to welcome Frank to the PGT team since he is a proven resource with a very strong track record of success in our industry. We look forward to working with him to bring the benefits of our research to the market.”

PGT Secures Final £2,000,000 of Series A Funding

Mel Kronick — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:01:54 +0000

Population Genetics technologies (PGT) Ltd, a privately owned company based in Cambridge, UK today announced that it had successfully met the commercial and development milestones set by its principal investors thereby securing its final £2,000,000 of Series A funding.

Initial seed funding for the company, which was founded in 2005 by Drs Sydney Brenner, Sam Eletr and Philip Goelet, came from the Wellcome Trust and Series A funding has been provided by Auriga Partners, Beringea Ltd and Compass Genetics Investors LLC.

Commenting on the most recent round of funding Mel Kronick, President and CEO of PGT said, ”We are very pleased, especially in the prevailing economic climate, to have been able to confirm and extend the support from our investors. This was achieved by proving the scalability and applicability of our technologies and their ability to overcome current, real-world constraints on access to “gold standard” population studies. This latest round of investment will allow us to not only progress our development activities but also to begin pre-commercial investigations of the various markets, business models and partners where our technologies can add value.”

Common Genetic Variation and Human Traits in NEJM

Mel Kronick — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:00:25 +0000

A commentary from David Goldstein at Duke University provides an interpretation and perspective on how best to interpret and utilise data from recent experiments linking human disease and related traits to genetic variation. The April 23, 2009 publication in the New England Journal of Medicine argues the scientific community needs to build on the common variant data with much more extensive investigation of rare variants.

Genomewide Association Studies and Human Disease in NEJM

Mel Kronick — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:00:08 +0000

In a recent review article in the New England Journal of Medicine, John Hardy and Andrew Singleton provide an excellent overview of the concepts linking genetic variability with observed phenotypes and the methods, such as genome wide association studies and sequencing, for analysing such variability. The focus is on the genetic causes of human disease but the principles discussed are much more general.

PGT Raises £3.8 Million in Series A Funding; Appoints Mel N. Kronick Chief Executive Officer

Conrad Lichtenstein — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:38:26 +0000

Cambridge, UK – 19 February 2008 – Population Genetics Technologies Limited (‘PGT’), a privately-held company focused on creating new paradigms for performing large-scale population genetics studies, today announced that it has raised £3.8 million in a first round of venture funding. The venture financing was provided by Auriga Partners, Noble Fund Managers, and Compass Genetics Investors LLC (the founders of PGT: Drs. Sydney Brenner, Sam Eletr and Philip Goelet).

The company today also announced the appointment of Dr. Mel N. Kronick as chief executive officer and member of the board of directors of PGT. Dr. Kronick was former division R&D manager at both Agilent Technologies and Applied Biosystems. In these previous positions Dr. Kronick was responsible for multiple product development activities that have resulted in commercially successful products using DNA sequencing and DNA microarray technologies. For the last 18 months he has worked closely with PGT management to refine PGT’s business focus and then to organise this Series A funding.

Joining Dr. Kronick on the PGT board are Dr. Bernard Daugeras, Managing Partner of Auriga Partners, and Dr. Stephane Mery, Director, Healthcare Investments, at Noble Fund Managers. Dr. Sam Eletr, former acting CEO of PGT, will now serve as board chairman: Dr Eletr was founder of Applied Biosystems (the company that developed the first and most successful DNA sequencing machines) and Lynx Therapeutics (the company that pioneered the genesis of the emerging next generation sequencing technologies). Dr. Mark Treherne, a former research executive at Pfizer, who has founded several UK biotechnology companies and served as chairman of the PGT board until now, will remain on the board.

PGT was started in 2005 with seed funding from the Wellcome Trust’s Technology Transfer Division to develop and then commercialise several novel concepts for studying populations that were proposed by Dr. Sydney Brenner, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002. Dr. Brenner has noted that “this new technology will 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.” Dr Sam Eletr recently observed: “Advances in technologies designed to obtain DNA sequence information are moving at a significant pace. Our new 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.

Auriga Partners ( http://www.aurigapartners.com ) is an independent venture capital firm based in Paris, France. It invests in innovative, high-potential ventures in information and communication technology and life science at the seed or early development stage in Europe, North America and Israel. Auriga Partners manages three funds totaling over €330 million. As well as investing the necessary capital, Auriga Partners also provides its portfolio companies with its know-how in developing and solidifying executive teams, structuring companies, broadening their networks and forming strategic and corporate alliances.

Noble Fund Managers ( http://www.noblegp.com/nfm ) based in London, UK, manages several VCT Funds and a Venture Debts Fund. One of its funds, Noble Health Fund VCT, is dedicated to healthcare.

The Wellcome Trust ( http://www.wellcome.ac.uk ) is the largest charity in the UK. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending around £650 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing.