In Partnership with Illumina Accelerator Cambridge & SF Bay Area:
A Special Series of 6 Amazing Startup Stories
- Aarogya AI: Diagnosing drug-resistant tuberculosis
- Pluton Bio: Mining the power of microbes
- Neurolytic H.: Personalised medicine for neurological conditions
- Tailor Bio: Precision medicine for cancer-based on genomics
- Medic Life Sciences: Increase success rate in cancer drug trials
- WellSim Bio: Isolating nano-particles and processing exosomes
The Story Structure
We will be following a 5-step Heroes’ Journey structure for these startups. In each video, you can see the marked chapters at the bottom of the screen. These are;
- Getting to know our heroes,
- Hear the “starting-up” story,
- Paths crossing with the accelerator,
- Toughest decisions they had to make,
- Big learning moments and the future direction.
There are key lessons and inspiration for founders, entrepreneurs and scientist who have thus far followed the academic path and would like to explore other directions.
The list will be updated each week for 7 weeks until all 6 startup episodes plus a special episode focusing on the Illumina Accelerator itself have been published. Follow us on Youtube and Instagram to stay updated.
1. Aarogya AI: Diagnosing drug resistant tuberculosis
AarogyaAI aims to diagnose drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) using Artificial Intelligence in a few hours. We enable quick and accurate diagnosis of DR-TB so that the patient can be rightly prescribed effective drug combinations for treatment, instantly.
A brief note about this special series from the founder
For many people in the different economies of the world, the search for meaningful work and gaining financial freedom do not always go hand in hand. Sometimes it is a difficult binary choice. Startups are almost like a cheat-code in that regard, allowing you to make your own coctail of meaning, impact, money and freedom. Of course, all of it comes at the cost of a high chance of failing, and the need for great emotional and mental resillience to make it through.
In partnership with the Illumina Accelerator based in Cambridge and SF Bay Area, we have interviewed six life-sciences startups, 2 in the UK and 4 in the US, for this special series.
This special series follows our Season 1, where we profiled 18 London based startups in 2020, and will kick off 2021, laying the groundwork for our Season 2.
Perhaps out of all the interviews we have done, these 6 startups have been the most fascinating, fun and inspiring to learn about. They are, without a doubt in our minds, driven by a desire to make a positive impact more so than many of the startups out there.
They have audacious goals, eyes set on big problems. Not only they are incredibly talentful, they also have unrivaled scientific know-how forming the backbone of their products. On top of that, they have the guidance of the Illumina Accelerator to back them up and help them scale.
2. Pluton Bio: Mining the power of microbes
Pluton can quickly and cost effectively mine valuable microbes for use in next-generation products that solve real-world problems. They work to discover novel microbes to use in new natural products in months, not years, at a fraction of the cost expended by current laboratories.
3. Neurolytic Healthcare: Personalised Medicine for Neurological Conditions
4. Tailor Bio: Precision medicine for cancer based on genomics.
Tailor Bio is bringing precision medicine to the deadliest cancers. They provide clinical decision support to physicians, allowing them to select the best therapy for their patients treatment. To do this, their technology decodes chromosomal instability and uses mutational signatures as biomarkers to inform therapy selection decisions.
5. Medic Life Sciences: Increase success rate in cancer drug trials
Their mission is to make cancer drugs survive and resurrect from devastated clinical trials in which 93% of cancer drugs are failed. They have a proprietary technology that can produce 2 million different tumor samples to test pre-clinical cancer drugs. This technique is based on generating massive 3D organoids and whole-genome editing of cancer organoids by CRISPR.
6. WellSim Bio: Isolating nano-particles and processing exosomes
WellSim Bio is focused on exploring the possibility and potential of exosomes with their advanced micro and nano technologies. They believe that exosomes can be the key to unlocking solutions to many diseases.
Illumina Accelerator: Building Breakthrough Genomics Startups
Illumina Accelerator is their way of accelerating innovation in the entrepreneurial community. With mentorship, financial support, and access to sequencing systems, reagents, and lab space, they are building a dynamic ecosystem to help genomics startups launch in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Cambridge, UK.
