Creathor Venture Invests In Ai-Enabled Clinical Genetic Testing Company Blueprint Genetics As Part Of An Up To € 14 Million Financing Round

Bad Homburg v.d.H., July 11th, 2017 - Creathor Venture announced today that it is leading a financing round for Helsinki, Finland-based Blueprint Genetics. The company is an internationally successful provider of clinical genetic testing for the diagnosis of inherited diseases, leveraging a proprietary AI-enabled sequencing and interpretation platform. The start-up will receive a total of up to EUR 14 million from an international syndicate of investors. The financing round is led by new investors Creathor Venture and MedTech Innovation Partners (MTIP), while existing investors Inventure and Pontos Group are participating as well.

Blueprint covers the entire workflow from patient sample to automated clinical interpretation of the results provided in a ready-to-use report, using CLINT, its artificial intelligence platform, together with its proprietary targeted sequencing technology, OS-Seq, developed at Stanford. Already today, Blueprint Genetics is one of the leading providers of clinical genetic testing with a portfolio of clinical-grade next generation sequencing (NGS) panels covering more than 2,200 disorders in 14 medical specialties such as cardiology, ophthalmology, hematology, neurology and immunology. The unique combination of genetic testing and analysis allows the company to gather variant data and link it to phenotype details, further building the already large underlying genetic database for high quality results interpretation. Blueprint today already works with more than 450 hospital customers in over 40 countries.

An estimated 350 million people globally are affected by severe inherited diseases. Sequence analysis is considered a standard approach for the identification and clinical diagnosis of the genetic cause of inherited disorders. Market experts estimate the overall genetic screening market will grow by more than 30 percent annually to a double-digit billion-dollar market in the next years. However, although sequencing costs declined, the complex procedure and cumbersome interpretation of results are still bottlenecks for commercial applications such as diagnostics, biomarker discovery and clinical drug development within clinical laboratories, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.

Tommi Lehtonen, CEO of Blueprint Genetics stated: “We were pleased to see the high level of interest by our existing as well as top-tier new investors in participating in this financing round. These funds will enable us to move our sequencing technology and our clinical data interpretation platform to the next level in terms of services provided, efficiency and level of automation. Our vision is to bring the use of genetic information to mainstream healthcare, and we strongly believe that cost efficiency combined with uncompromised, high quality is the key to achieve this goal. The ability to automate and improve clinical interpretation processes with software will change the industry and with our unique set-up we are well positioned to be forerunners in this realm.”

Blueprint Genetics will use the proceeds from this financing round to fuel further growth, strengthen sales, expand its geographic footprint and establish programs to further increase the efficiency of its sequencing platform and continue the development of its software component and data pool to make interpretation of genetic data more efficient.

Dr. Christian Weiss, Partner at Creathor said: “We are very impressed with the potential of Blueprint Genetics, a company that already is a top European provider in one of the fastest growing fields in healthcare. We at Creathor believe in supporting extraordinary ideas in technology and the life sciences as well as the intersection of these sectors. Blueprint’s combination of state-of-the-art DNA sequence analysis with automated software-based data interpretation perfectly fits with our investment strategy. That is why we have chosen Blueprint Genetics as an investment for our new fund. We are very much looking forward to working with Blueprint’s highly committed and experienced management team and to supporting the company in its next phase of development.”

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About Blueprint Genetics

Blueprint Genetics is a genetic diagnostic company that provides comprehensive genetics testing for all medical specialties. Its innovative technologies in human rare diseases enable improved tests with higher quality, lower cost and faster lead time. Blueprint offers full transparency to its technology, quality and performance, and analytic validations of its technologies. Its expert team of geneticists and clinicians together with its AI-powered CLINT technology provides top quality clinical interpretation and reports, changing the standards of molecular diagnostics. Blueprint Genetics is accredited by ISO 15189 and CAP (#9257331), and certified by CLIA (#99D2092375). For more information, visit www.blueprintgenetics.com.

About Creathor Venture

As a leading pan-European Venture Capital firm, Creathor Venture invests in technology-oriented companies and entrepreneurs. Creathor Venture focuses on mobile, digital media, cloud technology, artificial intelligence, internet of things, sharing economy, fintech. In the life science sector, we invest in selected areas such as precision medicine, enabling platforms, med tech and digital health. Regional focus is on Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France and the Nordics. The management team of Creathor Venture consists of Managing Partners Dr. Gert Köhler, Karlheinz Schmelig and Cédric Köhler, and Partners Christian Leikert, Christian Weiss and Christian Weniger. The team has been investing successfully in the early-stage venture capital business for 30 years. During that time, the team has built more than 200 technology companies successfully, conducted more than 20 international IPOs and has achieved exceptional returns for fund investors and the financed entrepreneurs in the past, all in the position as lead investor. The current portfolio of more than 30 companies is actively supported in development, growth and internationalization by a team of 19 staff. Creathor Venture manages funds of more than EUR 220 million and holds offices in Bad Homburg (Frankfurt), Tutzing (Munich), Zurich and Stockholm. As the largest investor in Creathor’s funds, the management underlines its entrepreneurial orientation. Find more information at www.creathor.com.

Contact

Creathor Venture
Thomas Dreiling
PR & Communications
Schwedenpfad 24
61348 Bad Homburg
Germany
Phone: +49 (0)6172 139720
Email: thomas.dreiling@creathor.com

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