Veritas Genetics, the company that earlier this year announced it had brought the cost of sequencing an individual's genome below $1,000, today announced it has raised a $30 million Series B financing.
Trustbridge Partners, a Shanghai venture capital and private equity firm with an office in Boston, led the round, joining existing investor Lilly Asia Ventures and new investor Jiangsu Simcere Pharmaceutical, a Chinese pharma giant.
In March, Veritas announced mGenome, a sequenced genome and analysis, delivered to the patient's smart phone for $999. The genome test would potentially replace every other genetic test a person could undergo, gathering and analyzing all 6 billion letters of an individual's genome. "Consumers would learn facts ranging from the silly (is their earwax wet or dry?) to the potentially scary, like whether they have 'highly pathogenic germline mutations' that cause things like malignant hyperthermia," The MIT Technology Review wrote at the time. Genes that contribute to susceptibility to cancer are also flagged by the test. The test is designed to screen for such conditions, not as a diagnostic, and may be less accurate than more targeted tests, the Tech Review reported.
The $30 million Series B brings Veritas' total funding to $42 million, following a $12 million Series A in 2015. Veritas was co-founded in 2014 by Harvard geneticist George Church (pictured), along with Mirza Cifric, formerly of AbVitro and Forma Therapeutics; Dr. Preston Estep III, from Church's lab; Dr. Joseph Thakuria of Mass General Hospital; and Jonathan Zhao, formerly of Amgen and Pfizer.
Along with the capital, Veritas announced three executive hires:
- Chief Operating Officer Tim Smith (formerly Sapient, Fidelity, Hewlett Packard and Cimpress);
- Chief Marketing and Design Officer Rodrigo Martinez (formerly IDEO and The Boston Consulting Group);
- Chief Commercial Officer Doug Flood.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story mistakenly left Mirza Cifric off the list of founders.
