SAN FRANCISCO – (COMMERCIAL THREAD) – Latch Bio, a company that is building data infrastructure for the bioinformatics revolution, today announced the closing of a $ 5 million funding round led by Lux Capital with participation from General Catalyst, Haystack, Fifty Years, and Asimov Co-Founder and CEO Alec Nielsen, Ph.D. The company also announced the launch of its one-of-a-kind web-based platform that allows any biologist to analyze CRISPR data without no code or cloud infrastructure configuration.
“Like genomics before it, the CRISPR community is faced with a tsunami of data and a dearth of computer tools necessary for their analyzes. As a result, skilled bioinformaticians are in high demand and researchers are waiting days for what can be completed in hours, ”said Brandon Reeves, Partner, Lux Capital. “The Latch team made it possible for any researcher in any lab to open a web browser, download data, and run a powerful computational pipeline without having to enter a single line of code or create any cloud infrastructure. By empowering the researcher, Latch helps remove a significant bottleneck that is currently slowing down the entire CRISPR research cycle. ”
Latch Bio was founded in 2021 by Alfredo Andere, Kyle Giffin, and Kenny Workman who met as undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley. Bringing together their backgrounds in engineering and computer science, they formed Latch Bio to build an infrastructure for scientists who need out-of-the-box solutions to advance their research. The Latch platform is a first web-based solution that addresses some of the key challenges facing CRISPR researchers, namely accessing bioinformatics experts and implementing cloud resources.
“Since 2015, the ChristianaCare Gene Editing Institute has been at the forefront of innovation to advance the use of gene editing to improve human health,” said Pawel Bialk, MS, principal investigator at the Gene Editing Institute. “Access to the right tools is essential to our success. The Latch platform, which includes ChristianaCare’s DECODR program, will provide immediate access to a wide range of popular CRISPR workflows that will further accelerate our discovery and translational research programs.
Thanks to the Latch platform, any researcher can now create a centralized one-stop-shop to store, transform and visualize their data without writing any code. Using Latch plugins, users can import files from their existing data stack, including Amazon S3, Benchling, and Illumina’s BaseSpace. Biologists have access to dozens of popular workflows, including CRISPResso, MAGECK, CasTLE, Cas.py, MultiQC, and CasOffinder, among others. After performing a specific workflow, users can further query the results using the built-in genomic viewer and quality checks. The Latch platform is offered free to academic research users.
“With the public launch of the Latch platform, we have officially launched our campaign to build and disseminate data infrastructure for the bioinformatics revolution,” said Kenny Workman, co-founder and chief technology officer.
“CRISPR scientists who are committed to changing the world deserve the best software, and at Latch, we listen to them, then build what they want. We want to be their champion and create solutions that make their jobs easier, ”said Kyle Giffin, Co-Founder and COO.
“We look forward to working closely with our users, who are each revolutionizing the capabilities of gene editing and will be invaluable partners as we continue to improve the Latch platform,” said Alfredo Andere, co-founder and CEO. “We are at the very beginning of realizing our vision and look forward to working closely with our advisors and our growing user base to further extend the capabilities of the platform. ”
For more information on accessing the Latch platform, please visit www.Latch.bio.
About Latch Bio
Founded in 2021, Latch Bio’s mission is to build and disseminate the data infrastructure for the bioinformatics revolution. The company’s cloud platform offers codeless bioinformatics to CRISPR researchers looking to store, transform, and visualize their data. Through any web browser, the global CRISPR community can quickly access bioinformatics pipelines and popular data visualization tools. The company’s investors include Lux Capital, General Catalyst, Haystack and Fifty Years. Latch Bio is based in San Francisco, California and can be viewed online at www.LatchBio.com.
