[[To comply with academic institution
guidelines, the founders' academic affiliations and roles are
listed only at the end of the statement.]]
BOSTON, May 21, 2024
/PRNewswire/ -- Somite Therapeutics, a tech-bio company harnessing
big data and AI to pioneer novel cell replacement therapies, is
thrilled to announce the addition of Prof. Jay Shendure as its newest Scientific
Co-Founder.
Prof. Shendure, an HHMI Investigator and world leader in
single-cell and functional genomic assays, has pushed the envelope
on the scale of analyses that are possible today. He has developed
massively parallel measurement approaches that solve open problems
in biology and has increased the throughput of digital twin embryos
by several orders of magnitude.
His addition to the team will help Somite advance its AI
platform, AlphaStem, to develop cell replacement therapies for
diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and muscular dystrophies.
"Our plan is to generate massive amounts of data to lay the
foundation of our AI/ML platform, Alphastem," commented Dr. Micha
Breakstone, Co-founder and CEO of Somite. "Prof. Shendure's
addition marks a pivotal moment for our company as we continue to
innovate and push the boundaries of what is possible in cell
therapy."
About Prof. Jay
Shendure
Jay Shendure, M.D., Ph.D. is an
Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Professor of
Genome Sciences at the University of
Washington, and Scientific Director of the Seattle Hub for
Synthetic Biology (Allen-CZI-UW), the Allen Discovery Center for
Cell Lineage Tracing, and the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision
Medicine. His lab is known for the development and application of
genomic technologies to outstanding challenges in genetics,
molecular biology and developmental biology. Dr. Shendure is the
recipient of the Curt Stern Award
from the American Society of Human Genetics, the Richard Lounsbery Award from the National
Academy of Sciences and the Mendel Award from the European Society
of Human Genetics. He is also an elected member of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy
of Sciences. He received his MD and PhD degrees from Harvard Medical School.
About Somite
Somite.ai is a venture-backed company
aiming to become the OpenAI of stem cell biology, developing
AI foundation models to produce human tissue for cell therapies at
scale for diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and muscular
dystrophies. Somite's AI platform, AlphaStem, fuels a
virtuous cycle: It enables new cell therapies, generating massive
data that further improve the platform, empowering even faster
therapy creation with broader applications.
Incorporated in Oct. 2023,
Somite.ai has raised $5.3m to
date.
Somite Management Team:
- Micha Breakstone, PhD: CEO and Co-founder - Repeat AI
entrepreneur (Chorus.ai acq. for $575m)
- Jonathan Rosenfeld, PhD: CTO
and Co-founder - Head of the Fundamental AI group at MIT
FutureTech
- Carl Morris, PhD: Chief
Scientific Officer
- Kristy Brown, PhD: SVP
Translational Development
Scientific Co-founders:
- Olivier Pourquie, PhD: Professor of Genetics and Pathology,
Harvard Medical School and Brigham and
Women's Hospital
- Allon Klein, PhD: Associate
Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard
Medical School
- Cliff Tabin, PhD: Chair of
the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical
School
- Jay Shendure, MD, PhD: HHMI
Investigator and Professor of Genome Sciences at University of Washington
Media Contact: media-relations@somite.ai
Website: www.somite.ai
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SOURCE Somite Therapeutics