Lexi Ventures is a VC firm with a unique focus on gene tech at seed stage.
The JP Morgan healthcare conference (JPM) is a big event in San Francisco in January. Some other VC firms host events with fine wine. Lexi Ventures has a different use for yeast.
We invite innovative startups and insightful investors to join us for pizza. 🍕
Priority will be given to founders visiting from out of town. Lexi Ventures wants to help you make the most of your San Francisco trip. Bay area startup founders should join one of our ongoing series of local coffee shop hangouts.
https://luma.com/LexiVentures
What else to do at JPM? To find other top networking opportunities at JPM, check out Aaron Blotnick’s secret master list of events (here). It includes:
STAT News event for influential CEOs and investors (Monday evening)
Nucleate at the Exploratorium for early stage startups and top-tier VCs (Wednesday evening)
DARPA + Ferocity Biodefense Summit for high stakes bio at the Exploratorium (Tuesday evening)
Omri’s Birthday Bash at NFX (Sunday night)
Bits in Bio Reception where software meets bio at the AWS Builder Loft (Tuesday evening)
Humans have millions of genes. An error in any one can cause a serious disease. The problem is that most such errors occur so rarely that the number of patients is too small to recoup the cost of developing a treatment. As a result, a large number of people suffer rare diseases.
The solution is to create a general treatment approach using DNA text-editing and get the FDA to approve the treatment to be applied to the DNA letters of any gene. There are important technical challenges and risks to consider. However, in a positive step, the FDA has created a “plausible mechanism pathway,” designed to accelerate approval of personalized gene therapies.
In another positive step, the USFDA decided to allow researchers to use de-identified patient data set without requiring every single patient to give informed consent. This common-sense allowance, comparable to any other tech sector, will make tremendously more patient data available to researchers and lower the costs and capital requirements and speed time to market and accuracy for diagnostic tools and effective therapies.
ApoA-I Milano is an Italian specialty you can’t order in any restaurant. Residents of the Italian mountain village of Limone sul Garda carry a “genetic shield”, a rare mutation known as ApoA-I Milano. Despite a diet rich in fats and oils, these villagers’ arteries are clear of the plaque that would be dangerous to almost anybody else.
This genetic fluke has turned the village into a living laboratory for population geneticists and researchers looking to design this “super-protein” into a life-saving treatment for heart disease. It is a reminder that sometimes the secrets to the future of global health are hidden in the DNA of tiny isolated communities.
Thank you for your interest and support.
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