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St. Sulpice, 30th October 2017 – For the 20th consecutive year Ernst & Young in Switzerland presented the Entrepreneur of the Year awards in front of 400 guests from the business, political and cultural arenas from across the country were in attendance at the gala in the Kursaal, Interlaken. Dr. Jurgi Camblong, CEO of SOPHiA GENETICS, won the “Emerging Entrepreneur” category as a reflection of the contribution he and his company are making to the field of clinical genomics.
Dr. Camblong is an important player in the field of genomics, his company’s technology, SOPHiA AI, is used by over 360 hospitals across 55 countries and has already analyzed the genomic profiles of over 140K patients. Dr. Camblong also sits on the Swiss government’s digital transformation advisory board. “Dr. Jurgi Camblong and SOPHiA GENETICS bring together scientific excellence and commercial expertise – this impressed our jury and myself. The combination promises a huge step forward in the successful treatment of genetic diseases.” – Heinrich Christen, Partner at EY and Leader Regions.
Marcel Stalder, CEO of EY in Switzerland, was delighted for the winners: “For me, the commitment of the participating entrepreneurs is a demonstration of what makes Switzerland a strong location for innovation, even in times of digital disruption: first-class expertise and a great deal of passion. The Entrepreneur of the Year award stands for exactly these virtues and is our commitment to Swiss enterprise.”
“It is a great honor to be acknowledged by EY as the Emerging Entrepreneur of the year. It is not just a personal prize for me but the recognition of a combined team success” commented Jurgi Camblong after the ceremony.
The Entrepreneur of the Year award is one of the largest and most prestigious business awards in the world. The competition is held with the same criteria worldwide. It is staged across 150 EY locations, and has taken place in Switzerland for the 20th consecutive year. This year entrepreneur, patron and philanthropist, Hansjörg Wyss, was honoured with the “Master Entrepreneur” award.
Photos of the winners can be downloaded from 9.30 pm on Friday, 27 October 2017 at http://www.ey.com/ch/en/newsroom/news-releases
Photos of the event can be downloaded from 4.00 pm on Monday, 30 October 2017 at http://www.eoy-gallery.ch/en/2017/
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About SOPHiA GENETICS
SOPHiA GENETICS: global leader in Data-Driven Medicine, SOPHiA GENETICS is a health tech company which has developed SOPHiA AI, the most advanced technology for clinical genomics, helping healthcare professionals better diagnose and treat patients. The global network of 360 institutions from 55 countries that use the SOPHiA DDM® analytical platform powered by SOPHiA form the world’s largest clinical genomics community. By enabling the rapid adoption of genomic testing worldwide, turning data into actionable clinical insights, and sharing knowledge through its community, SOPHiA GENETICS is democratizing Data-Driven Medicine to save lives. More info: http://www.sophiagenetics.com
SOPHiA GENETICS is on Twitter, follow @SOPHiAGENETICS | For media and journalist inquiries, please contact the SOPHiA GENETICS media relations team by either email or telephone: rchandramouli(at)sophiagenetics.com or +41 79 378 1543.
About the global EY organization
The global EY organization is a leader in assurance, tax, transaction, legal and advisory services. We leverage our experience, knowledge and services to help build trust and confidence in the financial markets and in economies all over the world. We are ideally equipped for this task – with well-trained employees, strong teams, excellent services and outstanding client relations. Our global mission is to drive progress and make a difference by building a better working world – for our people, for our clients and for our communities.
The global EY organization refers to all member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited (EYG). Each EYG member firm is a separate legal entity and has no liability for another such entity’s acts or omissions. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. For more information, please visit www.ey.com
EY’s organization is represented in Switzerland by Ernst & Young Ltd, Basel, with ten offices across Switzerland, and in Liechtenstein by Ernst & Young AG, Vaduz. In this publication, “EY” and “we” refer to Ernst & Young Ltd, Basel, a member firm of Ernst & Young Global Limited.
Mexico City, 11th October 2017: SOPHiA GENETICS, global leader in Data-Driven Medicine, today announced that six leading healthcare institutions from across Mexico have joined the company’s community by adopting SOPHiA artificial intelligence, which provides affordable, reliable and more effective clinical genomics solutions for cancer and congenital disorders.
Mexico has a long history in human genetics, and was one of the early adopters of genomics research in the region. While Next-Generation DNA Sequencing (NGS) testing capabilities have been established persisting challenges include the analysis of the complex data that they generate, and making this technology easily and equally accessible across the country. This is how SOPHiA GENETICS is making a meaningful contribution, supporting and accelerating the adoption of genomics testing in Mexico. The company’s solutions are tailored to the individual needs of hospitals or laboratories regardless of whether they have NGS testing capabilities or not.
By adopting SOPHiA artificial intelligence for their clinical genomics analysis, these Mexican institutions (listed below) join the world’s largest clinical genomics community. Through the company’s Software-as-a-Service platform, SOPHiA DDM, clinicians are connected to a network of over 360 hospitals across 55 countries. The platform enables clinicians and researchers to make sense of genomics data to better and faster diagnose and treat patients.
“Since inception, our vision has been to develop innovative technological solutions to help patients, equally wherever they live. SOPHiA acts as a real disruptor by breaking down the information silos in healthcare, meaning that the information from a patient in London can for instance help better diagnose and treat a patient in Mexico City.” – Dr. Jurgi Camblong, CEO and Co-Founder of SOPHiA GENETICS
The following Mexican healthcare institutions have recently committed to using SOPHiA AI:
Below are two example from the list above that illustrate how SOPHiA GENETICS supports its new partners in Mexico:
Servicios Genomicos :
“SOPHiA is the most advanced technology for clinical genomics available. We can now confidently detect genomic alterations related to myeloid malignancies and rare congenital disorders. With these solutions, we expect to provide better guidance towards individualized treatments through consistent high quality and reliable data.”– Dra. Alaez, director del Laboratorio de Servicios Genómicos
The National Institute of Respiratory Diseases & its Research Center for Infectious Diseases (INER - CIENI)
“For us the fact that SOPHiA GENETICS provides a fast and reliable solution that guarantees clinical grade standards for NGS was key in our decision to work with them. Our collaborating will significantly accelerate our turnaround time for genomic analysis.” - Dr. Santiago Ávila, investigador en Ciencias Médicas, CIENI, INER
St. Sulpice (VD), Switzerland, 13 September 2017: SOPHiA GENETICS, the global leader in Data-Driven Medicine that has created SOPHiA Artificial Intelligence, today announced the close of a $30 million Series D funding round. The round was led by London-based Balderton Capital joined by 360o Capital Partners alongside existing investors British tech star Mike Lynch’s Invoke Capital and Alychlo, the investment firm of Belgian pharmaceutical entrepreneur Marc Coucke.
The company’s universal technology, SOPHiA AI, accurately analyzes and detects all types of genomic variants to help clinicians better diagnose and treat their patients. Its innovative technology and global approach were recently recognized by the MIT Technology Review’s "50 Smartest Companies" who ranked SOPHiA GENETICS thirtieth. SOPHiA is being used daily by 334 hospitals across 53 countries, and has tested over 125,000 patients to date.
This new round of funding enables SOPHiA GENETICS to continue its journey of democratizing Data-Driven Medicine worldwide. The company will use these resources to further develop its cutting-edge technology. Additionally, the company will continue recruiting top talent and accelerate hospitals’ adoption of clinical genomics testing, no matter if they are equipped (with a Next-Generation DNA Sequencing lab) or not. The company’s dedicated team who develops SOPHiA is driven to support clinicians by providing them with the best diagnosis technologies and helping them to find treatment options that save lives.
“Since inception, our vision has been to develop innovative technological solutions to help patients, equally wherever they live. SOPHiA acts as a real disruptor by breaking down the information silos in healthcare, meaning that the information from a patient in London or Paris can for instance help better diagnose and treat a patient in Lagos or Rio.”
– Dr. Jurgi Camblong, CEO and Co-Founder of SOPHiA GENETICS
This is only the beginning. With more and more hospitals adopting SOPHiA AI the company has created the largest clinical genomics community which enables the hundreds of institutions in the network to safely and anonymously share their findings and knowledge while ensuring patient data privacy.
“While recent technology disruptions have made DNA sequencing more affordable and available to the masses, issuing a clinically-proofed diagnostic based on a large set of genomic data remained time consuming and largely incomplete for healthcare professionals. Clinicians using SOPHiA GENETICS’ artificial intelligence now have a best- in-class technology to unlock the full knowledge hidden behind DNA samples, and to set the right diagnostic for the right condition, in particular for oncology and hereditary disorders. The clinicians we met were unanimous about the incredible value brought by SOPHiA as part of their daily routine. We have been very impressed by the accomplishments of the team to date, and we are very excited to be working alongside the founders towards establishing SOPHiA GENETICS as the global leader in Data-Driven Medicine (DDM).”
– Nicolas Autret, Partner at 360 Capital Partners
In the near future, each medical interaction will start with a genomic test corroborated with other patients’ health records. This “Real Time Epidemiology” is paving the way for the new era of efficient personalized medicine and SOPHiA is at the forefront of facilitating this deployment.
“SOPHiA GENETICS is a company at the forefront of two rapidly changing technologies: genomic medicine and artificial intelligence. By giving every healthcare professional a standardized, straightforward and fast way to analyze these complex data sets is an essential step to unlock the potential of Data-Driven Medicine. As diagnostic kits and sequencers become cheaper and more powerful, we believe that there is an opportunity to build the defining software layer on top of these technologies in genomics, just as Windows did for PCs and Android has for smartphones, and SOPHiA GENETICS is already leading in this field.”
– James Wise, Partner at Balderton Capital
SOPHiA GENETICS recognized as part of the 50 companies worldwide that best combine innovative technology with an effective business model
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, 28 June 2017: SOPHiA GENETICS, the global leader in Data-Driven Medicine, has been named on the MIT Technology Review 2017 list of ‘50 Smartest Companies’, which identifies 50 companies creating new opportunities by combining important technologies and business savvy. Ranked number 30, SOPHiA GENETICS is listed amongst global and innovative companies like Salesforce, Alibaba, IBM, GE or Tesla. The company was selected for being an “evangelist of Data-Driven Medicine, sorting through genomic information with AI to accelerate diagnosis in oncology, cardiology, and more”, and having “tested 106,000 patients to date” thanks to its artificial intelligence SOPHiA.
SOPHiA GENETICS uses AI to accelerate patients’ diagnosis and personalize care. SOPHiA analyses patients’ genomic profiles - once sequenced - and identifies genomic alterations behind patients’ diseases to provide actionable clinical insights to doctors. SOPHiA GENETICS’ unique approach lies in the hundreds of hospitals worldwide that use its analytical platform, thus ensuring that knowledge is scaled through network effects and that SOPHiA continues to learn iteratively as more genomic profiles are analyzed.
Founded in 2011, SOPHiA GENETICS has since then been at the forefront of standardizing genomic data analysis for clinical diagnostics. The company is currently enrolling 10 new healthcare institutions every month on its SOPHiA-powered analytics platform. In the summer 2016, the company began global expansion outside Europe, which resulted in the adoption of its AI by leading hospitals and healthcare institutions from Canada, Australia, Russia, and Latin America. Most recently, thanks to its accessibility, SOPHiA has also been deployed by hospitals from the African continent, further democratizing patients’ access to the most advanced technology for genomics.
In just 3 years, SOPHiA GENETICS scaled its model and SOPHiA is now used by 305 hospitals worldwide. Around 110.000 patients have been tested to date, making SOPHiA the technology of choice for clinicians analyzing patients’ genomic profiles. The company’s goal is to cross the threshold of 1 million patients’ tested by 2020. The company now employs 130 staff working across the world. It has raised over 33mio USD in funding from some of the most successful entrepreneurs such as Mike Lynch and Mark Coucke.
Experiencing a 300% growth year-on-year, SOPHiA GENETICS has established itself as the de facto global leader in Data-Driven Medicine. By enabling the rapid adoption of genomic testing worldwide, turning data into actionable insights, and sharing knowledge through its community, SOPHiA GENETICS has triggered a wave of democratization of Data-Driven Medicine worldwide, empowering hospitals across the globe to embrace the genomics revolution. SOPHiA allows any hospital, no matter its experience in genomics, to get up to speed and analyze genomic data to identify disease-causing variants and match them with the most effective drugs that can be used to treat patients.
“To be named on the MIT Technology Review 2017 global list of ‘50 Smartest Companies’ is a testament to the global movement of Data-Driven Medicine democratization we are spearheading”, commented Dr. Jurgi Camblong, SOPHiA GENETICS’ CEO and co-founder. “SOPHiA GENETICS is constantly improving its technology and operations with the goal to make actionable clinical information accessible to all. Our recognition as part of the MIT Technology Review ‘50 Smartest Companies’ 2017 global list further exemplifies the company’s growth and momentum to date. SOPHiA is now clinicians’ technology of choice to address the challenges of analyzing the tsunami of genomics data generated by the modern clinical workflow. By bringing down this barrier, SOPHiA allows hospitals worldwide to embrace the clinical genomics revolution, to the ultimate benefits of patients.”
Sophia Genetics injects artificial intelligence in liquid biopsies to accelerate early detection of cancer and monitor treatments’ effectiveness
CHICAGO, USA, 6 June 2017: SOPHiA GENETICS, the global leader in Data-Driven Medicine, unveiled today at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) a new AI-powered solution for liquid biopsies. This new application taps the analytical power of the company’s artificial intelligence, SOPHiA, to help clinicians diagnose, treat and monitor cancer earlier and more effectively by looking at circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) contained in patients’ liquid samples such as blood, urine, and cerebral spinal fluid.
Compared to tissue biopsies, liquid biopsies allow clinicians to perform analysis of solid tumors and hematological malignancies at various time points to detect and monitor treatments’ effectiveness or tumor progression. This new approach also represents a faster and less invasive alternative for patients.
The lack of a standardized analytical solution able to take into account different samples’ stability and low ctDNA levels has for a long time been a significant barrier to the widespread adoption of liquid biopsies in hospitals. SOPHiA solves these challenges by offering a standardized DNA analysis approach to liquid biopsy testing, built upon the network of 300 hospitals from 50 countries already using SOPHiA for genomic data analysis. Even with low ctDNA levels, SOPHiA provides indispensable insights into tumors’ profiles, straight from liquid samples.
One of the first users of SOPHiA for liquid biopsies, Prof. Léa Payen-Gay, co-investigator of the CIRCAN (“CIRculating CANcer”) program at the Hospices Civils de Lyon Laboratory, based in Lyon, France, explained “SOPHiA helps save precious time and resources and serves as an excellent benchmark for our laboratory as it detects and validates a more comprehensive list of variants. The company’s analytical platform, SOPHiA DDM, is user-friendly and easy to navigate, making it possible for a user to be hands-on from benchtop to variant calling.”
Rather than waiting for months to detect changes on an imaging scan, SOPHiA allows clinicians to monitor a tumor's progression with remarkable precision from a simple blood test. Faster and more accurate analysis eliminates undue anxiety resulting from biased answers and unclear response to heavy treatments, making regular status-check less stressful and painful for patients. SOPHiA’s application for liquid biopsies is also available for clinical trials, making it possible to identify the patients most likely to benefit from new treatments.
To facilitate the interpretation of all the genetic variants detected by SOPHiA in ctDNA, the analysis results are presented in the company’s OncoPortal, an interface dedicated to solid tumors and hematological malignancies, which experts can access on the company’s online analytical platform Sophia DDM. OncoPortal flags associations between human gene variants, disease causality, progression, drug efficacy and toxicity to help the clinicians better leverage the data analyzed by SOPHiA in order to provide personalized care to patients.
Jurgi Camblong, CEO and co-founder of Sophia Genetics, commented, “By applying SOPHiA’s state-of-the-art analytical power to liquid biopsies, clinicians can now leverage the collective intelligence of over 300 hospitals to help better diagnose, treat, and monitor cancer in a less invasive manner for patients. Now supporting tumor testing directly from blood samples with ctDNA, SOPHiA has the potential to benefit thousands of patients’ lives, by giving clinicians access to the most advanced technology for cancer diagnosis and identification of successful treatments.”
SOPHiA AI demystifies the secrets of the exome, home to 85% of disease-causing genetic variants. Now clinicians get highly accurate results to diagnose patients for rare hereditary disorders.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, 29 May 2017: SOPHiA GENETICS, global leader in Data-Driven Medicine, announced at the 50th Anniversary Conference of the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) the release of its Whole Exome Solution (WES) and Clinical Exome Solution (CES). Accessible through SOPHiA DDM®, the company’s analytical platform for clinical diagnostic, these solutions are powered by new knowledge-driven DNA sample preparation kits, which allow clinicians to fully leverage the power of SOPHiA Artificial Intelligence (AI) to get access to broader, deeper and more meaningful clinical insights.
Today, only 25% of rare diseases are accurately diagnosed1. With SOPHiA’s applications for exome analysis, this is set to change. The exome is the protein-coding region of the human genome, which represents just 1% of the genome but contains approximately 85% of known disease-causing genetic variants2. SOPHiA takes exome sequencing to new heights, allowing for unmatched analytical performances to detect and annotate disease-related genetic variants over all protein-coding regions of the human genome.
Exome sequencing generates large amounts of sequenced data. The problem is that reporting variants depends on the algorithms used to sift through this data, leading to a substantial discordance in variants description between the different annotation tools and their descriptions in functional and clinical databases. Consequently, clinicians can confound variant matching which is a critical step in variant classification. SOPHiA now overcomes variant annotation tools’ limitations by annotating variants in a way that helps clinicians better interpret genomic data and achieve more accurate and precise clinical care. Based on pattern-recognition technologies, SOPHiA features a database search engine that guarantees the identification and retrieval of the matching variants regardless of their representations, such as Indels (insertion or the deletion of bases in the DNA) aligned differently, or complex variants.
Variants interpretation is one of the most complex challenges in exome sequencing. But this is also an area where AI can deliver superior insights. SOPHiA processes raw genomic data to detect, annotate, and pre-classify variants to facilitate and accelerate clinician’s decisions. Through SOPHiA, knowledge silos are broken in a collective effort to democratize diagnosis of rare genetic disorders.
Being already used by over 830 experts (i.e. biologists, pathologists, and geneticists) across 285 hospitals, SOPHiA’s unique approach to knowledge sharing makes the experience of an expert in one hospital scalable for the diagnosis of patients in other hospitals. In fact, the more variant interpretations are performed, the more SOPHiA is trained, and the better genetic variants are pre-classified according to the disease types. With the steady increase of both clinically relevant genes and genetic variants to consider in diagnostic, this technology is a now must to help ensure all patients are being diagnosed at the same level, no matter their location.
Dr. Reinhard Hiller from the Centre for Proteomic and Genomic Research Artisan Biomed Laboratory based in Cape Town, South Africa, explained how WES helps save precious time and resources, “Sophia Genetics’ Whole Exome Solution (WES) serves as an excellent benchmark for our laboratory as it detects and validates a more comprehensive variant list. Sophia DDM® analytical platform is user-friendly and easy to navigate, making it possible for a user to be hands-on from benchtop to variant calling”.
In less than three years, SOPHiA has made genomics for routine clinical diagnostic a reality in over 285 hospitals from 50 countries across the globe. Using AI and leveraging knowledge-sharing to create a collective intelligence, Sophia Genetics continues its mission to democratize Data-Driven Medicine. With faster, more affordable, and more accurate results, the AI-powered exome solutions by Sophia Genetics represent the next frontier in Data-Driven Medicine, and the most efficient diagnostics tool for clinicians faced with unclear phenotypic data.
References:
1. Clinical exome sequencing for genetic identification of rare Mendelian disorders.Lee H, Deignan JL, Dorrani N et al. JAMA. 2014 Nov 12;312(18):1880-7. doi: 10.1001/jama.2014.14604.
2. What can exome sequencing do for you? Majewski J, Schwartzentruber J, Lalonde E et al. J Med Genet 2011; 48 (9): 580 – 9.
Medical institutions from Morocco, Cameroon and South Africa choose SOPHiA artificial intelligence to advance clinical genomics across Africa
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, 24 March 2017: SOPHiA GENETICS, global leader in Data-Driven Medicine, unveiled today, at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) in Phoenix, the list of African hospitals that have started integrating SOPHiA, the company’s artificial intelligence, into their clinical workflow to advance patients’ care across the continent.
Medical institutions at the forefront of innovation already using SOPHiA in Africa include:
African hospitals are adopting SOPHiA to - no matter their experience in genomic testing - get up to speed and analyze genomic data to identify disease-causing mutations in patients’ genomic profiles, and decide on the most effective care. As new users of SOPHiA, they become part of a larger network of 260 hospitals in 46 countries that share clinical insights across patient cases and patient populations, which feeds a knowledgebase of biomedical findings to accelerate diagnostics and care.
Speaking about the adoption of SOPHiA in Africa, Jurgi Camblong, Sophia Genetics’ CEO and co-founder, declared “Since inception, our vision has been to develop innovative technological solutions that analyze patients’ genomic profiles to offer better diagnosis and care to the greatest number of patients, wherever they live. Today, I am very proud that SOPHiA is triggering a technological leapfrog movement in healthcare across Africa.”
Jurgi Camblong added “By joining our community, African hospitals are breaking down the technological barriers that prevented African patients from benefiting from the same level of genomic testing than patients from the best medical centers worldwide. This is a story about accessibility, democratization, empowerment, and hope.”
Among other diseases, SOPHiA will be a key partner for African hospitals in oncology. Breast cancer, for instance, has been described as a “serial killer” on the continent as lack of relevant diagnostics and personalized care means that 60% of women with breast cancer in Africa die versus 20% in the US and EU. According to a 2012 global report from the International Prevention Research Institute, an earlier diagnostic of breast cancer could increase life expectancy by 30%. Globally, on the continent, the number of new cases of cancer every year should jump to 1.6 million by 2030. As oncology expertise might be based in different places across the globe, SOPHiA, ensures that the knowledge of a specialist in Paris will for instance be accessible to save patients in Nairobi.
Speaking about the benefits of using SOPHiA for African patients, Dr. Reinhard Hiller from the South African Centre for Proteomic and Genomic Research (CPGR) commented “In creating a first-of-its-kind Genomic Medicine offering in Africa, using SOPHiA has been beneficial because its analysis are used by a global community of genomic medicine practitioners, allowing us to offer a best-in-class service.”
Prof. Hicham Mansour, Geneticist at the University Mohamed 1st Genetic Department - Al Azhar Oncology Center in Morocco, added “Using SOPHiA allows us to analyze genomic data quickly and with great confidence, to better diagnose and follow up with our patients”.
Jurgi Camblong concluded “After Europe, Canada, Australia, Russia, and Latin America, the adoption of SOPHiA in Africa is perhaps the strongest evidence that the democratization of Data-Driven Medicine is changing scale to help the highest number of patients, wherever they live across the globe.”
SOPHiA GENETICS products are for Research Use Only and not for use in diagnostic procedures unless specified otherwise.
SOPHiA DDM™ Dx Hereditary Cancer Solution, SOPHiA DDM™ Dx RNAtarget Oncology Solution and SOPHiA DDM™ Dx Homologous Recombination Deficiency Solution are available as CE-IVD products for In Vitro Diagnostic Use in the European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom and Switzerland. SOPHiA DDM™ Dx Myeloid Solution and SOPHiA DDM™ Dx Solid Tumor Solution are available as CE-IVD products for In Vitro Diagnostic Use in the EEA, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Israel. Information about products that may or may not be available in different countries and if applicable, may or may not have received approval or market clearance by a governmental regulatory body for different indications for use. Please contact us at [email protected] to obtain the appropriate product information for your country of residence.
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