The startup will use the money to further develop its bioinformatics software.
Advaita, a Michigan-based biotech startup, has secured the second phase of a SBIR grant, the US government’s Small Business and Innovation Research programme. The grant is worth nearly $2m.
The startup is commercialising gene pathway analysis technology developed at Wayne State University. The technology, dubbed Pathway Guide, helps researchers trying to understand the data generated by high-throughput experiments, including next-generation sequencing. It aims to eliminate false positives in diagnosis, as well as correctly identify biologically meaningful pathways in a given disease.
The technology is already being used by a number of large US research universities such as Harvard University, Columbia University Medical Centre and the Karmanos Cancer Institute. The company is planning to expand its customer base substantially to also include big pharmaceutical companies.
Advaita currently employs a staff of 11 people, along with three summer interns. It is growing slowly but steadily, and has hired two people over the past year, a project manager and a PhD-level research scientist. It wants to further expand its staff by hiring two software developers by the end of the year in order to ramp up the commercialisation of its technology.
Sorin Draghici, president and chief executive of Advaita, said about the seed new capital: “It will allow us to continue development of our software tools and our products for personalised medicine. We have a number of high-profile institutions that are using our tools. We are also getting ready to release a new web application called iPathwayGuide.”
