CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Nov. 29, 2012 – Era7 Bioinformatics, a Next Generation Sequencing provider based in Spain, announced today the opening of its first U.S. office, located in the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) in Cambridge, Mass. Era7 expects to have three employees in Cambridge by the end of 2013.
“When we first thought about expanding our company outside of Spain, we felt that the USA would be the first foreign market for us and that Massachusetts was the best option for our business,” said Era7 CEO, Eduardo Pareja. “Massachusetts will offer our company two important pieces: The most innovative and advanced public and private research activities around genomics, biomedicine and biotechnology, and the best place to attract talented people to grow and extend our bacterial genomics-based business.”
“Thanks to our growth strategy of investing in education, innovation and infrastructure, Massachusetts continues to lead the world in life sciences,” said Governor Deval Patrick. “We welcome Era7 Bioinformatics to Massachusetts and look forward to their contributions to our thriving life sciences community.”
“On behalf of the Center, I would like to extend our warmest congratulations to the team at Era7 as they open their first U.S. office here in Massachusetts,” said Susan Windham-Bannister, Ph.D., President & CEO of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, the agency charged with implementing Governor Patrick’s 10-year, $1 billion Life Sciences Initiative. “The Commonwealth has emerged as a stand-out leader in the field of bioinformatics, with a strong, technology-oriented workforce that will provide a depth of talent for Era7 as they grow their business here.”
Era7 worked closely with the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center as they developed their plans for their first U.S. office.
“Congratulations to Eduardo and the Era7 team on the opening of their first U.S. office; it is an achievement not just for the company, but for the Massachusetts supercluster, which continues to grow as the U.S. base for international life sciences companies,” said Robert K. Coughlin, President & CEO of MassBio, a biotechnology trade association representing 600+ member organizations. “We are excited to be a destination for innovative companies like Era7.”
More than one-half of all the genomic information available today, globally, comes from bacteria. Next Generation Sequencing technologies have radically changed the scenario of genomic data acquisition by means of lowering the sequencing prices by a factor of more than one-thousand over the past five years. Era7’s BG7 bacterial genome annotation system was specially designed for Next Generation Sequencing data for a bacterial genome. The open source BG7 system, which was successfully used last year to obtain one of the first annotations of the E. coli German outbreak genome, was recently published in the open access journal, PLOS ONE.
Founded in 2004, Era7 has become a leading company in Next Generation Sequencing and bacterial genomics in Spain. Era7 is headquartered in Granada, with offices in Madrid, and currently employs 16 people, the majority of whom are researchers investigating new approaches for Genomics data analysis based in Cloud Computing.
Era7’s new U.S. office is based at:
Era7 Bioinformatics
Cambridge Innovation Center
14th floor
Cambridge, MA 02142
USA
About Era7 Bioinformatics
Era7 Bioinformatics is a Next Generation Sequencing service provider that specializes in Microbial genomics. Its business model is based on offering complete and integrated solutions, from project design to deep bioinformatics analysis and reporting. Era7 Bioinformatics is based in Research, Cloud Computing, Open Source and bacterial genomics specialization.
Contacts:
Eduardo Pareja
CEO
Era7 Bioinformatics
epareja@era7.com
Phone: 617-401-3340
Angus G. McQuilken
Vice President for Communications & Marketing
Massachusetts Life Sciences Center
amcquilken@masslifesciences.com
617-921-7749
