INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Making sense of DNA data is a two-step process, namely the biochemical-sequencing of the DNA and the analyzing and extracting insights from
As of today in 2018, the first part of this process is now almost fully automated requiring minimal human intervention
Even sequencing costs have dropped below $1,000 and soon they will reach $100, according to the industry
The second part of the process, however, is a long way from being automated because it very complex, time-consuming and requires highly
specialized experts to analyze the data.Now a startup plans to address this problem.London-based Lifebit is building a cloud-based cognitive
system that can reason about DNA data in the same way humans do
This offers researchers and RD professionals, with limited-to-no computational and data analysis training, and their corresponding
pharmaceutical companies), a highly scalable, modular and reproducible system that automates the analysis processes, learns from the data
and provides actionable insights.It now closed a $3m (£2.25m) Seed funding round led by Pentech and Connect Ventures, with participation
from Beacon Capital and Tiny VC (AngelList)
The company is simultaneously announcing the launch of its first product, Deploit, what it claims is the world first AI-powered genomic data
analysis platform, and, says the company, is already being trialled by major pharmaceutical and biotech companies.The main &competitor& for
Lifebit is the DIY process of analysing and getting actionable insights out of genomics and biodata
Organisations, both in industry and research, build custom software and hardware solutions to be able to analyse the huge volumes of genomic
This leads to a large waste of resources since custom software and hardware is expensive and hard to scale and maintain.A few platforms have
been created like DNAnexus and SevenBridges
However, these platforms tend to lack flexibility, don&t integrate with the way the vast majority of bioinformaticians work, operate like
black boxes which fail to provide the user with full control and transparency, can be very costly to use, and enforce lock-downs
All in all, if the user stops using these platform, all their past work is no longer accessible
And they are not designed for AI and advanced learning from previous analysis performed.Lifebit Deploit platform is designed to address all
these problems with a particular highlight on the machine learning functionalities that automate the process and on creating the next tool
that will be used by everyone in the community who is trying to analyse and understand genomic and bio data, very much like GitHub changed
software engineers& lives.In fact, Deploit will be priced with a pricing model similar to GitHub
It is free for individual, non-commercial, usage, and then you pay for team functionalities and for enterprise deployment and usage.Lifebit
was incorporated in April 2017 but founders Dr
Maria Chatzou (CEO) and Dr
Pablo Prieto only started working on it full-time in July when we moved to London to join Techstars.&The problem these organizations face is
no longer sequencing vast quantities of genomic data, but rather making sense of this data quickly and affordably,& says Chatzou
&This requires new data analysis technologies, which is where Lifebit comes in
Our mission as a company is to enable cloud-based real-time genomic analysis at scale, anywhere, by anyone.&
