Healthtech startup accelerating genetic disease research raises $11M in Series A funding round

• Sano Genetics is building patient-friendly tech and matchmaking people to research to help pharma and biobanks make discoveries and develop personalised treatments more quickly and cost-effectively.
• Drug development takes 10-15 years and many medicines never make it out of R&D because recruitment is painful, participant drop out rates are high and costs are prohibitive.

Sano Genetics, co-founded by three University of Cambridge genomics postgraduates, has raised $11M in a Series A funding round led by MMC Ventures, with further funding from Episode 1, Seedcamp and several angel investors.

These include Paul Forster, a co-founder and former CEO of Indeed, Paul Wicks, former VP of innovation at PatientsLikeMe, and Margo Georgiadis, the former CEO of Ancestry.com.

The startup has developed a software platform that connects patients living with rare and chronic conditions, such as Long Covid, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, directly with biotech and pharma companies leading personalised medicine research – a market worth $52.4B in 2020 and predicted to reach $112.8B by 2027.

It also offers its biotech and pharma clients the ability to power branded portals for participant recruitment and engagement, on a national or global scale.

Sano Genetics raised £500K in pre-seed funding in 2018, and £2.5M in seed funding in 2020, which helped get the platform into the hands of more customers, including precision medicine developers BenevolentAI, ESCAPE Bio, and population-scale biobanks such as the NIHR BioResource.

The company has doubled its revenue every six months since inception and forged strong partnerships with the top genetic biobanks in the UK and Australia, as well as patient groups.

The company will use this latest round of funding to grow its team in the US and Europe, and develop its platform to meet demand in 50+ diseases and 6+ countries by mid 2023.

As well as speeding up the development of new medicines,  Sano Genetics aims to dramatically improve the experience for those who take part in potentially life-changing research. Participants receive regular updates as well as insights based on their genetic profiles, and have total control over their data from the intuitive, private-by-design user interface.

There is no cost to participants, who use at-home DNA kits to take part. Sano Genetics operates a subscription model, charging its pharma, biotech and population health clients for use of its platform.

Dr Patrick Short, CEO and co-founder of Sano Genetics, says: 

“It still takes 10 to 15 years for new drugs to reach patients, and many will never make it out of R&D because costs are prohibitive. This funding injection takes us closer to our mission to build the platform that we, and many others – patients and researchers – wish was available a decade ago. One that will make research much faster, more cost-effective, and a vastly better experience for patients.”

Charlotte Barttelot, investor at MMC Ventures, says: 

“Since meeting Patrick and the Sano team, we have been consistently impressed with their unwavering purpose-led strategy to promote access to, and the success of, personalised medicine. To deliver on the promise of this new approach to treatment, there is an urgent need to solve the largest problems in clinical trials: patient recruitment and engagement. This is where Sano’s innovative software platform, which allows them to interact directly with patients, biotech and broader healthcare communities, can be transformational for the future of personalised medicine.”

ENDS

Notes to editor

About Sano Genetics

Based in Cambridge, UK, Sano Genetics was founded in 2017 by three students of genomics: Charlotte Guzzo (COO), Patrick Short (CEO) and William Jones (CTO).

It helps accelerate precision medicine research by finding people who wish to contribute to studies and helping them do so effortlessly and on their terms. Its platform adopts innovations widespread in other sectors, such as user-friendly digital interfaces, dynamic individualised feedback and an emphasis on privacy, packaged as an end-to-end service that lets people power global studies from their own homes. https://sanogenetics.com/ 

About MMC Ventures

MMC funds and helps scale technology companies that are transforming today’s markets. MMC has been backing transformative tech companies from the Seed and Series A stage since 2000. MMC commits to a deep understanding of each company’s underlying technology and business model to help make better decisions and be more effective partners.

Transformative technology companies MMC has backed to date include Gousto, Current Health, Copper, Ably, Signal AI, Tyk, Bloom & Wild and Peak.

Explore MMC’s research and other actionable insights at www.mmc.vc.