Pittsburgh, PA. September 9, 2019
Ocean Genomics Inc., a privately held company, has closed initial financing, led by Ocean Investors, LLC, that will be used to advance its whole-transcriptome analysis platform. The company will expand and support its advanced open-source expression analysis software pipeline while creating commercial enhancements and extensions using artificial intelligence-driven algorithms to deliver client solutions in oncology, in both research and clinical applications.
Ocean Genomics’ analysis platform is based on validated, open-source applications developed by the co-founders over the last 7 years. The platform includes a gene expression quantifier (Salmon), a transcript assembler (Scallop), a structural variant predictor (Squid), an HLA assembler (Kourami), as well as other analysis components. These components support extraction of informative features from high-throughput sequencing data, which are key for expression-based biomarker discovery. Salmon and its previous versions have been cited in over 1200 publications.
Carl Kingsford, Ph.D., Professor of Computational Biology in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and co-founder stated, “RNA has been used in a variety of applications in research for years. Advances in bioinformatics-driven by A.I. coupled with the ability to store and analyze vast amounts of data for interpretation makes now the right time to accelerate our work.”
Rob Patro, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Computer Science at University of Maryland and co-founder states, “We aim to expand the reach of advanced transcriptome analysis techniques by offering and supporting a robust and harmonized solution based on open source technologies, and our commercial extensions and enhancements for custom client applications and analytic challenges.”
Stan Marks, M.D., founder and CEO of Oncology Hematology Associates, stated, “Ocean Genomics has the team and the vision to bring new computational technology into the clinic to interpret both tissue- and blood-based assays. I am excited to be an early part of the company’s development”.
Ocean Genomics’ executive team carries deep scientific and commercial experience in biotechnology. Carl Kingsford, Ph.D., (CEO) Professor of Computational Biology at Carnegie Mellon University and Rob Patro, Ph.D., (CTO) Assistant Professor of Computer Science at University of Maryland, College Park, are the technical founders and developers of the analysis pipeline. Eric Schultz (co-founder) and Stan Skrzypczak lead commercial strategy, corporate and business development, and marketing. Eric Schultz also serves as advisor to the Carnegie Mellon Center for Machine Learning and Health, and was co-founder and former CEO of COTA, and of QuantiaMD, and has held executive roles at Microsoft and Qualcomm. Stan Skrzypczak was formerly V.P. of Corporate Development and Reimbursement at both Guardant Health and Invitae, and a senior marketing executive at Genomic Health.
About Ocean Genomics:
Ocean Genomics, Inc. (https://oceangenomics.com) creates software to analyze gene expression and RNA sequencing data. Our mission is to provide the world’s most accurate, efficient, and comprehensive gene expression analyses by supporting and extending our current state-of-the-art gene expression and transcriptome analysis software, and engaging with customers in programs of biomarker discovery and validation.
For more information, see our website at www.oceangenomics.com, or email Eric Schultz, eric@oceangenomics.com.