Prof. Jay Shendure Joins Somite Therapeutics as Scientific Co-founder

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May 21, 2024, 10:07 ET

[[To comply with academic institution guidelines, the founders' academic affiliations and roles are listed only at the end of the statement.]]

BOSTON, May 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Somite Therapeutics, a tech-bio company harnessing big data and AI to pioneer novel cell replacement therapies, is thrilled to announce the addition of Prof. Jay Shendure as its newest Scientific Co-Founder.

Prof. Shendure, an HHMI Investigator and world leader in single-cell and functional genomic assays, has pushed the envelope on the scale of analyses that are possible today. He has developed massively parallel measurement approaches that solve open problems in biology and has increased the throughput of digital twin embryos by several orders of magnitude.

His addition to the team will help Somite advance its AI platform, AlphaStem, to develop cell replacement therapies for diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and muscular dystrophies.

"Our plan is to generate massive amounts of data to lay the foundation of our AI/ML platform, Alphastem," commented Dr. Micha Breakstone, Co-founder and CEO of Somite. "Prof. Shendure's addition marks a pivotal moment for our company as we continue to innovate and push the boundaries of what is possible in cell therapy."

About Prof. Jay Shendure

Jay Shendure, M.D., Ph.D. is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, and Scientific Director of the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology (Allen-CZI-UW), the Allen Discovery Center for Cell Lineage Tracing, and the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine. His lab is known for the development and application of genomic technologies to outstanding challenges in genetics, molecular biology and developmental biology. Dr. Shendure is the recipient of the Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics, the Richard Lounsbery Award from the National Academy of Sciences and the Mendel Award from the European Society of Human Genetics. He is also an elected member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences. He received his MD and PhD degrees from Harvard Medical School.

About Somite

Somite.ai is a venture-backed company aiming to become the OpenAI of stem cell biology, developing AI foundation models to produce human tissue for cell therapies at scale for diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and muscular dystrophies. Somite's AI platform, AlphaStem, fuels a virtuous cycle: It enables new cell therapies, generating massive data that further improve the platform, empowering even faster therapy creation with broader applications.

Incorporated in Oct. 2023, Somite.ai has raised $5.3m to date.

Somite Management Team:

Micha Breakstone, PhD: CEO and Co-founder - Repeat AI entrepreneur (Chorus.ai acq. for $575m)
Jonathan Rosenfeld, PhD: CTO and Co-founder - Head of the Fundamental AI group at MIT FutureTech
Carl Morris, PhD: Chief Scientific Officer
Kristy Brown, PhD: SVP Translational Development

Scientific Co-founders:

Olivier Pourquie, PhD: Professor of Genetics and Pathology, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital
Allon Klein, PhD: Associate Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School
Cliff Tabin, PhD: Chair of the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School
Jay Shendure, MD, PhD: HHMI Investigator and Professor of Genome Sciences at University of Washington

Media Contact: [email protected]i
Website: www.somite.ai

SOURCE Somite Therapeutics