As always, the health care industry is growing.
In fact, this year, Boston's biotech sector saw its biggest job growth in a decade, according to the Boston Business Journal. After taking a look at our 50 on Fire winners, this is no suprise.
The city is home to some of the world's most renowned hospitals: Massachusetts General Hospital, Tufts Medical Center and Brigham and Women's Hospital. And local initiatives debuting new genetic technology and health data sharing platforms are transforming the way we live and breathe.
Meet the cream of the crop by perusing this year's 50 on Fire winners in health care, health tech and wellness:
Beam Therapeutics: The Cambridge biotech startup bills itself as the first company to pursue development of new therapies using CRISPR base editing technology, heralded by many as “CRISPR 2.0.” In March, Beam Therapeutics closed a monster Series B round: $135 million to advance the company’s development of next-generation CRISPR technologies, expand its pipeline of base editing programs and further extend its scientific and technical leadership. Indeed, just six months later, Beam nabbed Terry-Ann Burrell from J.P. Morgan to serve as the startup’s CFO. Beam was selected by the New England Venture Capital Association as this year’s “Revolutionary New Therapeutic or Platform Startup” at an awards ceremony in May. It has licenses and agreements with Harvard University, the Broad Institute and Editas Medicines.
Christoph Lengauer: A partner at local venture capital firm Third Rock Ventures, Lengauer is described as “instrumental” in the launch of several companies, including Relay Therapeutics, Celsius Therapeutics and Thrive Earlier Detection. Lengauer currently serves as interim chief scientific officer at Celsius. It’s not his first rodeo: He was previously chief scientific officer at Blueprint Medicines, a Cambridge-based oncology therapeutics company. Lengauer has previously earned the Novartis Oncology’s President’s Award for Top Innovator and has been elected to membership in the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars.
Definitive Healthcare: At just eight years old, the Framingham-based provider of data analytics for health care organizations has been featured as one of Massachusetts’ fastest-growing companies by the Boston Business Journal for the last three years. Today, Definitive has more than 2,500 clients and more than 350 employees. The company says it has grown to about $100 million via investments from firms like Spectrum and Advent International. In February, it used some of that cash to buy the vendor data services business of Chicago-based HIMSS Analytics to help strengthen its market intelligence platform.
Life Image: The Newton-based medical exchange platform is, to hear the company tell it, “reinventing how data is used in drug development.” Founded in 2008, the company has connected 10,000 health care facilities with some 150,000 U.S. providers and 58,000 clinics internationally. This year, Life Image has entered into at least eight partnerships with such organizations as NextGate and Stanford. The company is apparently still riding the waves of some big funding rounds from a few years back: a $15 million Series C round in 2013 and a $17.5 million financing round in 2015, plus an additional $5 million strategic investment that same year.
Kyruus: For the Boston-based health care logistics provider, it’s just partnership after partnership. Last week, it announced it would be partnering with Uber Health; in August, it linked up with the not-for-profit health system Norton Healthcare; and in July, it began working with Oregon Health and Science University. Last year, it moved to a brand-new office in Boston’s Fort Point neighborhood. That all comes on the heels of plenty of successful funding rounds—most recently, a $4 million strategic investment from Salesforce Ventures (which itself added to the company’s $10 million round earlier in the year).
Sherlock Biosciences: The bioengineering startup launched in March this year with an impressive initial financing of $35 million. The following month, the company closed its Series A round, bringing its total capital to $49 million, including an unusual investment from the Open Philanthropy Project, an organization funded by billionaire Facebook and Asana co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Sherlock’s technologies are currently in use at the co-founders’ labs at the Broad Institute and the Wyss Institute. Its two main products? SHERLOCK, a CRISPR-based method to detect and quantify specific genetic sequences, and INSPECTRTM, a synthetic biology-based molecular diagnostics platform.
