In New York, Illumina is giving capital and access to seeding funding from angel investors as part of their accelerator program to five new companies. Launched in 2014, the accelerator program gives the start-up companies lab and office space, business coaching and access to sequencing and genomics expertise.
The five companies include:
- • Encompass Bioscience, a digital genetics information company that helps personalize treatments.
- • Checkerspot designs biotech and chemistry based materials.
- • Chimera Bioengineering develops chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapies.
- • Mantra Bio focuses on immunotherapy drug discovery.
- • Solarea Bio is working on next-generation probiotics from natural sources.
Illumina has been in the news quite a bit recently as it just settled a patent infringement lawsuit with Qiagen over next-generation sequencing technology, but now are facing another lawsuit from Columbia University.