Biotia in the news

We are incredibly honored to be a part of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly Plenary on Tuesday, February 7th. We will contribute to the briefings from eminent scientists and academics on sustainable global solutions and "early warning for pandemic preparedness." Our own CEO and cofounder, Dr. Niamh B. O'Hara will be presenting at 3 PM EST. Read more here -- https://lnkd.in/em95Save

‍Fellow presenting scientists will also include Dr. James Golden from The Rockefeller Foundation, Dr. Rafael Maciel-de-Freitas from Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, FIOCRUZ - Fundação Oswaldo Cruz and Institute for Tropical Medicine (Brazil, Germany), Dr. Soojin Jang from Institut Pasteur (Korea), and Dr. Charles Vörösmarty from The City University of New York (U.S.).

The event will be webcasted with the Pandemic Preparedness session on Tuesday starting at 3 p.m. EST.

Nov. 19th, 2022 — Excited to announce that today at the 7th Annual MetaSUB Consortium Conference, Biotia will launch their technology platform to identify, analyze, track and forecast global health threats. At 2 PM EST, our CTO, Dr. David Danko will present the new platform at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach.

For genomics researchers, please join us as an alpha user.

Oct. 18th, 2022 — Biotia will present its industry-changing technology that enables more accurate detection of pathogens in urine samples compared to traditional methods at IDWeek 2022 in Washington, DC. The presentation, titled "Clinical-Grade Metagenomics in Urinary Tract Infections: Improving Performance of Next-Generation Sequencing Assays Using Internal Controls and Machine Learning," will be delivered on October 20, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m.

Aug. 23rd, 2022 — Biotia has raised an oversubscribed $8 million Series A round led by OCA Ventures. Link to read more!

Aug. 16th, 2022 — See our press release on Biotia joining Mayo Clinic Platform with more about our goals here.

Aug. 2nd, 2022 — Biotia and Twist Bioscience receive expanded EUA from the FDA for the SARS-CoV-2 NGS Assay. With expanded authorization, the reporting of the identified and differentiated SARS-CoV-2 genetic mutations and viral lineages (e.g. Delta, Omicron) to clinicians is now authorized, potentially aiding them to direct appropriate clinical management based upon the specific lineage of virus. You can read more here.

Aug. 2nd, 2022 —We are thrilled to share that Biotia has joined Mayo Clinic Platform Accelerate. We look forward to pushing the frontiers of infectious disease diagnostics together.

Our CEO, Niamh O’Hara, represented our company at the CDC SPHERES Meeting and shared the newest updates of our user-friendly COVID-DX software that provides deep SARS-CoV-2 genomic insights.

Biotia will be presenting at IDWeek 2021, a joint annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the HIV Medical Association (HIVMA), the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS), and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP) with over 10,000 attendees. Our presentations are listed below:

1) A novel likelihood-based model to estimate SARS-CoV-2 viral titer from next-generation sequencing data (POSTER PRESENTATION)

Heather L Wells, Joseph E Barrows, Mara Couto-Rodriguez, Xavi Jirau Serrano, Marilyne Debieu, Karen Wessel, Colleen Beth Johnsson, Bradley A Connor, Christopher E. Mason, Dorottya Nagy-Szakal, Niamh B. O’Hara

2) Extraction-free RT-PCR to Detect SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern  (ORAL PRESENTATION)

Brian L. Harry, Yue Qiu, Ling Lu, Mara Couto-Rodriguez, Dorottya Nagy-Szakal, Niamh O'Hara, Shi-Long Lu

3) Performance characteristics of sequencing assays for identification of the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome (POSTER PRESENTATION)

Danny Antaki, Mara Couto-Rodriguez, Tong Liu, Kristin Butcher, Esteban Toro, Bryan Hoglünd, Xavier Jirau Serrano, Joseph Barrows, Bradley Connor, Christopher E. Mason, Niamh B. O’Hara, Dorottya Nagy-Szakal

Biotia is a proud supporting partner of the XPRIZE Rapid Covid Testing Competition, which recently announced the 5 winning teams that created high-quality, affordable COVID-19 testing solutions to help society reopen safely. You can read more on the winners and their testing solutions here.

Our CEO was on the Healthcare Entrepreneurship Panel for AHE Cornell’s Women in Healthcare Leadership Symposium.

Members of the Biotia team were authors on a paper, “Shotgun transcriptome, spatial omics, and isothermal profiling of SARS-CoV-2 infection reveals unique host responses, viral diversification, and drug interactions” published in Nature Communications! This massive research effort on SARS-CoV-2 was led by co-founder Dr. Christopher Mason and included many impressive collaborators. Hybrid-capture NGS work was done at the Biotia Lab. You can access the full paper here.

Co-founders Dr. O’Hara and Dr. Mason speak at the Harvard Brain Science Initiative discussion, “COVID-19: Detection Technologies and Neurological Impact Conversations Between Academia and Industry” moderated by David Brann of Harvard Medical School.

Biotia, together with Twist Bioscience, announces the development of an advanced research tool for the detection, characterization, and surveillance of SARS-CoV-2, providing deep insight into genetic variants, mutations, and evolution of the virus. Read the full press release here.

Our CEO presented at Tau Ventures Startup Event: Annual Tau Day alongside 4 other portfolio companies leveraging AI to do important work. See the recap here.

Biotia presented recent work done with Twist Bioscience at IDWeek 2020, focusing on COVID-19 diagnostics using NGS. More info here.
Session Title: COVID-19 Diagnostics
Poster Title: SARS-CoV-2 NGS Assay Powered by Biotia COVID-DX Software

Our CMO is proud to join the Consortium on Translational Research in the Microbiome and the Westchester Biotech Project to talk about Advancing Microbiome Science to Clinical Practice and share the work Biotia is doing for the infectious disease diagnostic field. For more information, visit their site.

Our Director of Software Engineering, Joe Barrows, MS, was recently featured in Microsoft Azure’s blog on accelerating genomics workflows and data analysis. Joe discussed how Biotia is propelling novel next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based detection and characterization of COVID-19. Read the full article here.

Our CMO and Co-founder presented at the LabRoots Coronavirus Virtual Event Series. Chief Medical Officer, Dorottya Nagy-Szakal MD PhD discussed uses of next-generation sequencing to detect, characterize, and surveil COVID-19 infection while co-founder Christopher Mason PhD spoke on host and viral transcriptomes during COVID-19 infections.  Check out the Virtual Event Page for more details.

Our CEO led a discussion on how leveraging high-complexity next generation-sequencing tests can be used to guide infectious disease treatment and improve health outcomes at LabRoots Microbiology Virtual Week 2020. Register for free to watch the full recording here.

Biotia was featured in a Fierce Biotech piece about NYC biotech companies rallying to test for COVID-19. Read more here.

Biotia is proud to be featured as part of the TEDMED 2020 Hive Program at the Westin in Boston, MA. Dr. O'Hara will be presenting in TEDMED Innovator Meetup "New Age Diagnostics” as well as Community Lunch: Celebrating Innovation with the Hive Innovators. For more information, click here.

Our Chief Medical Officer was one of the speakers at the 4th Microbiome Movement - Drug Development Summit in London, UK. Dr. Nagy-Szakal participated in a Pre-Conference Workshop focusing on the use of metagenomics to understand the human microbiome to address antimicrobial resistance as well as a Mastermind Session discussing the harnessing of the microbiome to develop breakthrough diagnostic tools. More information about the event can be found here.

Our CEO was interviewed by BioWorld MedTech about our work and recent seed raise.

We are thrilled to be invited as an AI and Patient Engagement Panelist at Becker's 5th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference in Chicago. More about the event can be found here.

Great article by WIRED about Biotia’s work battling HAIs using sequencing-based tests: https://www.wired.com/story/dna-sequencing-detect-infectious-disease/

Biotia is honored to join the Digital Health Breakthrough Network! We look forward to both building relationships in the NYC healthcare system, and working with the HITLAB and NYCEDC's team to streamline and enhance our implementation. For more details, please read the NYCEDC press release.

Biotia is proud to commit with more than 100 organizations against the global threat of antimicrobial resistance, at the  “Global AMR Challenge” launched yesterday at the CDC.  For more information, please visit the CDC article.  

Biotia, featured as one of the five Cornell Tech companies to watch by Tech:NYC! Congratulations to Crater, Cabinet, OnSiteIQ and Tatch as well!  For more detail, please check it out the full article.

With the flu still around, watch out for highly touched surfaces in your workplace... Our co-founder Dr. Chris Mason explains to CBS News how shotgun sequencing and computational analysis can help effectively for tracking the flu.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/your-workplace-could-be-a-breeding-ground-for-the-flu/

Our study related to the microbiome of ambulances is now available in open access in the journal Microbiome. This nationwide project was led by our CEO/co-founder, Dr. Niamh O'Hara, with contributions from Biotia co-founders, Dr. Chris Mason, and Dr. Rachid Ounit. It is the only study of its kind, showing that metagenomics can be a powerful method to characterize the microbial ecology of pre-hospital ambulance settings! Please read our publication here.

GenomeWeb, a leading online media that tracks innovations in genomics, genetics and bioinformatics, wrote about us!   Check it out the article here.

Cornell Chronicle wrote a cover article about us and our collaborations with academic institutions.