Marc Coucke Leads Series C Round in Sophia Genetics

LAUSANNE, Switzerland, December 16, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

• Sophia Genetics announces the closing of a $15 million Series C financing round led by Omega founder and Belgian billionaire Marc Coucke
• With the support of Marc Coucke and Mike Lynch, Sophia is now backed by two of Europe's leading entrepreneurs

Sophia Genetics, the global leader in Data Driven Medicine (DDM), today announced the closing of a new $15 million Series C financing round led by Omega founder and healthcare scion Marc Coucke. The funds will be used to continue Sophia's rapid market expansion and broaden its range of genomic tests.

Witnessing a 400% growth rate this year alone, Sophia Genetics now supports more than 100 healthcare institutions across 20 countries. Its innovative analytics platform, Sophia DDM™, holds unique machine learning based algorithms and hosts the world's largest clinical genomics community, placing Europe ahead of the US in precision medicine.

Leading this financing round, Omega founder and Belgian billionaire Marc Coucke explained, "Sophia Genetics stood out among an increasingly crowded field as it is so far ahead in fulfilling the promise of genomic testing, particularly in the fight against cancer. I have no doubt that the company will continue to thrive as more hospitals and labs adopt its cutting edge molecular diagnosis solutions, to the benefit of patients all over Europe."

Marc Coucke founded Omega Pharma in 1987 and sold it to global healthcare supplier Perrigo in 2014 for more than $4.5 billion.

Sophia Genetics has previously received backing from Mike Lynch, founder of Invoke Capital. With both Coucke and Lynch as major investors, Sophia now counts support from two of Europe's most successful life science and technology entrepreneurs in the last decade. Such recognition exemplifies Sophia Genetics' success and the potential of its technology to change the healthcare industry by making precision medicine a reality.

Mike Lynch said, "This is a very exciting time for Sophia Genetics, and I am proud of its progress.

"Legacy approaches produce results good enough for research but not accurate enough for clinical use. By applying the latest machine learning Sophia has pioneered a clinical approach to analysing genomic data that outpaces any other technology in speed and accuracy, both of which are critical to patient outcomes."

Speaking about this unique milestone moment for the company, Jurgi Camblong, CEO and co-founder of Sophia Genetics commented, "Sophia has experienced incredible growth over the past 18 months, driven by our superior analytical performance which allows hospitals to conduct genomics tests on cancers and genetic diseases. We have made the dream of precision medicine a reality for 25,000 patients so far, and more continue to benefit every day."

Among the 100 healthcare institutions using Sophia Genetics is Oxford University Hospital, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Vall d'Hebron Hospital and Cologne University Hospital. These institutions use Sophia DDM™ and leverage the company's cutting edge analytics technology and advanced machine learning algorithms to analyse the genetic make-up of some common cancers and inherited conditions to more accurately and quickly diagnose thousands of patients.

Over the past 18 months, Sophia has expanded its team to 60 employees - two thirds of them hold PhDs and are world-class experts in genomics, bioinformatics, computational and data protection. Since its inception, Sophia has built an innovative network of pioneering healthcare institutions, all of whom are leaders in their countries and eager to accelerate the routine clinical use of genomics data and Next Generation Sequencing in clinical diagnosis.

About Sophia Genetics 

Sophia Genetics, a global leader in Data Driven Medicine, brings together expertise in genetics, bioinformatics, machine learning and genomic privacy. Based in Switzerland, we are known for our high medical standards and Swiss precision when it comes to accuracy and quality management. Sophia Genetics offers health professionals who perform clinical genetic testing bioinformatics analysis, quality assurance, and secure banking of patient DNA sequence data generated by NGS. Sophia Genetics does not hold personal information on patients, and the patient data we do hold is anonymised. Sophia Genetics helps clinical laboratories to reduce the cost, overcome complexity and fulfil quality constraints related to the use of NGS in the clinic. For more information, visit http://www.sophiagenetics.com and follow @SophiaGenetics and @JurgiCamblong.

Alphonse Daudré-Vignier
Weber Shandwick Switzerland
+41-79-127-63-58
ADaudre-Vignier@webershandwick.com 

Laura Furness
Edelman
+44-203-047-2452
laura.furness@edelman.com