Knome

About Knome

Knome Inc. was a genomics company focused on the interpretation of the human genome for research and medical applications. Founded in 2007 by Harvard Professor George M. Church, Jorge Conde, and Sundar Subramaniam, the company was established on the premise that the decreasing cost of whole genome sequencing would spur a significant market need for interpretation services and technologies.

George Church is a renowned geneticist, molecular engineer, and serial entrepreneur who pioneered personal genomics and synthetic biology. His development of direct genomic sequencing methods in 1984 was a foundational element for the Human Genome Project. Jorge Conde brought experience from biotechnology finance, business development, and operations, having worked at MedImmune, Helicos Biosciences, and Morgan Stanley before co-founding Knome, where he also served as CEO.

Knome's business catered to academic, pharmaceutical, and medical researchers, providing them with tools to identify genetic variants underlying diseases, tumor growth, and drug responses. The company's revenue was generated through its software and service offerings. A key milestone occurred in 2008 when Knome interpreted the genome of the third person ever to be sequenced. Another achievement came in 2010 when they assisted the University of British Columbia in identifying a gene defect linked to Parkinson's disease.

The company's core technology, kGAP, an informatics engine launched in 2009, formed the basis for its products. Knome offered two main solutions: the knoSYS™ system and the knomeDISCOVERY service. knoSYS was a decision support system for laboratories, providing a complete infrastructure for the analysis, annotation, and interpretation of human genome, exome, and targeted sequence data. knomeDISCOVERY was an end-to-end service for pharmaceutical and academic researchers conducting large-scale interpretation of human exomes and whole genomes. These offerings were designed to manage and analyze large volumes of genomic data, integrating information from numerous third-party sources to aid in variant prioritization and classification.

In November 2015, Knome was acquired by Tute Genomics, a clinical sequencing informatics company. The acquisition aimed to combine Knome's interpretation technology, particularly the knoSYS platform, with Tute's cloud-based informatics and clinical reporting platform. Subsequently, in October 2016, PierianDx acquired Tute Genomics, further consolidating the technologies to create a more comprehensive and integrated platform for clinical genomic analysis, covering both somatic cancer and constitutional disorders.