Five million for genome analysis
Runa invested Station X
This was the second round for Station X.
The company, founded in 2010 by Richard Gould, Todd Klingler and Andrew McBride, will direct funds to expand the team and accelerate the commercialization of its main product GenePool™. It is a software platform for biomarker search that allows storing, analyzing and visualizing large arrays of genomic data for translational research, development of diagnostic tests and pharmaceuticals, as well as clinical genomic analysis.
According to Randall Scott, a member of the company's board of directors, "Station X offers the first platform designed specifically for working with groups of genomes, which is of paramount importance for the development of new diagnostic tests based on genomic data, and therefore for increasing qualitative growth in molecular diagnostics, pharmacogenomics and oncology."
Runa Capital, as already mentioned, acted as a key investor in this round, and the fund's partner Andrey Bliznyuk will join the board of directors of the company. The Board currently includes founders Richard Gould and Todd Klingler, as well as Randall Scott, founder of Genomic Health and Incyte Genomics (NADAQ: INCY), and Roy Whitfield, member of the Board of Directors of Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) and former Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Incyte Genomics. Andrey Bliznyuk answered TF's questions.
Why did Runa decide to go into a new area for herself? Are you expanding your area? In fact, this is the same area as usual.
The fact that Station X is engaged in medical and near-medical projects does not matter in this sense. There is a certain vertical – a software solution – in which we invest. This is absolutely our focus: "clouds", software platform, big data.
That is, your competencies are more than enough. Sure.
What the company does is bioinformatics, it has nothing to do with test tubes, which we just don't understand.
How long-term is this investment for you? The life span of our fund is "ten plus two years", and from the point of view of the horizon, all investments are the same for us.
It is clear that we will exit some companies earlier, because they themselves and the markets in which they operate will allow us to exit with the right share of profit, but in general our investors are ready that an exit can happen in 10 years. We invested in Station X at a fairly early stage, for them this is the second round: the product is there, now it needs to be commercialized.
You have more and more non-Russian companies in your portfolio. Is this part of the strategy? In fact, there are much more Russian companies in our portfolio.
But that's not the point anyway. For example, "cloud" projects, where we have very high expertise, come to us from all over the world – it would be foolish to limit yourself only on the basis of the origin of the company. Therefore, we simply do not make such a division – we have tricks from the point of view of markets, I have already said about them, but this is completely different.
More information about Station X can be found on the company's website.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru18.09.2012