FOSTER CITY, Calif., Jan. 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Silicon Valley Biosystems (SV Bio), a diagnostics company founded to provide rapid, accurate, and turnkey clinical interpretation of comprehensive genomics data at the point of care to improve the health and outcomes of patients, was launched today. Backed by Sequoia Capital, a premier venture capital firm that helped to build Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Oracle and numerous biotech companies, SV Bio is ushering in the next phase of genomics-based medicine by providing clinicians with the tools they need to make faster, more precise and cost-saving decisions.

"The transition is occurring very rapidly nowadays from genomics as a science to genomics as a key driver of clinical medicine and decision-making at the bedside," noted Dietrich Stephan, Ph.D., SV Bio founder and CEO.  "As genomic sequencing costs plummet, the potential clinical impact soars.  SV Bio is building the requisite bridge from the genomics bench to the bedside, assisting physicians with the accurate and actionable interpretation they need for optimizing care for each individual."

Up to now, clinical adoption of genomic technologies has been hampered by the deluge of data, the difficulty of analysis in real-time, and the difficulty of integrating research technologies into the clinical setting.  SV Bio intends to accelerate that adoption, by making it simple and easy for all types of physicians and large health care providers.

"SV Bio really sees the world through the eyes of the clinician.  To us, the word 'actionable' means finding a precise diagnosis for a case; reducing risk for family members; and predicting if treatments will be effective or futile," said Tim Triche, M.D., Ph.D., a clinician with 30 years of scientific and medical experience at pioneering companies including OncorMed, Genelogic, and GenomeDx and also Chairman of Pathology at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, who serves on the company's Board of Directors.  "It takes data currently available but cumbersome and challenging to use, and delivers it in a format that is more easily interpreted by the physician and applicable to individualized patient care."

A Rapid, Easy to Use Decision Support Tool for Clinicians
SV Bio's turnkey genomics interpretation services query the patient's genome at the point of care and distill the biological data into a concise, actionable report that medical generalists and specialists can easily use as a decision support tool.

The SV Bio platform fits into current clinical workflows and is able to take data from any next generation sequencer and determine with clinical grade sensitivity and specificity which genetic variants within a patient's DNA sequence are influencing a disease or condition. The resulting clinical reports are fast—taking only minutes to complete from sample sequence to delivery of the report to the physician—and are presented in a format that makes it easy for practitioners to read, interpret and apply to patient care.

Early Success Identifying Underlying Causes of Mystery Conditions
Many patients have already been helped by SV Bio diagnostic services.  One recent case involved a family with two affected children who were initially thought to have autism spectrum disorder due to their language regression, IQ drops and seizures at 2 years of age. Subsequent neurodegenerative decline puzzled physicians at leading medical institutions and triggered a multi-year odyssey of clinical workups and focused genetic testing. Ultimately, the physicians turned to SV Bio, where the patient genomes were sequenced and the underlying genetic mutation in a gene named TPP1 was uncovered immediately. The gene defect causes the extremely rare disease late-infantile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis that is fatal by 8 years of age. The mutation was verified biochemically to be causative of the disorder, and allowed the children to gain access to a clinical trial that has shown promising results at halting the progression of the disease – a trial to which they would never have turned for a solution to a fatal disease in the absence of a specific molecular diagnosis.

"This is the new wave of genomics medicine; one that we expect to set new precedents and have a major impact on healthcare overall," said Dr. Triche.

SV Bio is currently providing diagnostic testing services to physicians and centers of excellence for all heritable genetic conditions. These services include testing single genes and bundled gene sets for disorders which are genetically heterogeneous and for which the causative genes are known. In addition, testing of the entire genome is available for mystery illnesses or in cases where other diagnostic companies could not return a definitive result because the causative gene is not known, or in cases where a variant was detected but could not be classified as causative. SV Bio uses sophisticated classification technology to provide the highest precision of pathogenicity prediction for variants, which have not been seen before - increasing sensitivity when coupled with the highest quality next-generation sequencing of the entire genome. Testing can be obtained by contacting SV Bio at connect@svbio.com.

About SV Bio
SV Bio is a diagnostics company, founded to provide rapid, accurate, turnkey clinical interpretation of comprehensive genomics data at point of care to improve the health and outcomes of patients. The Company was founded by Dietrich A. Stephan, Ph.D., who has dedicated his career to the development of genomics-based precision medicine and has gathered a multi-disciplinary team of experts in genomics, statistics, bioinformatics, and machine learning. SV Bio is backed by Sequoia Capital, a premier venture capital firm that helped to build Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Oracle and numerous other technology-based firms. SV Bio's Board of Directors includes Timothy Triche, M.D., Ph.D., of the Center for Personalized Medicine, Children's Hospital Los Angeles; Warren Hogarth, Ph.D., M.B.A., a partner at Sequoia Capital; Todd Cozzens, M.B.A., formerly of Picis, who serves as SV Bio's Chairman; and Jeremy Friese, M.D., M.B.A., who leads business development, finance and practices medicine at the Mayo Clinic.  For more information, please visit www.svbio.com.

Contact:
Lynn Blenkhorn
508 851-0930
Lynn.blenkhorn@fkhealth.com

SOURCE SV Bio