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06/06/2017 02:07 PMJune 6, 2017: Mount Sinai Health System has created a new spinout for-profit company called Sema4 with labs in Branford [opened in 2014 as Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai] and New York City. Leading the team is world-renowned bio-mathematician Eric Schadt, PhD.
Sema4 will have a staff of more than 300, including scientists, doctors, engineers, clinicians, genetic counselors, and business leaders.
"The 50 employees who were working in Branford under Mount Sinai Genetic Testing laboratory are now full-time employees for Sema4," said Chief Laboratory Operations Officer Todd Arnold, PhD. "We are planning to expand our current laboratory space in Branford and we anticipate once the expansion is completed, additional opportunities will be available."
Spearheading diagnostic operations with Arnold are Lisa Edelmann, PhD, Sema4's Chief Diagnostics Officer and long-time Executive Director of the Mount Sinai Genetic Testing Laboratory in New York City.
Dr. Schadt is an impassioned advocate for sharing big data across institutions (not commonly done today) to model the complexity of disease and wellness.
"To do that you need millions of samples that simply aren't available in any one place," Dr. Schadt recently told an audience at Techonomy Health in New York during a panel discussion about cancer. "The only way we are going to win this game is by opening that data, being able to aggregate it across all institutions and putting the patient first. Patients should be empowered to take their own data and share it with whomever they want during their lifetime."
Dr. Schadt and his team at Sema4 aim to revolutionize clinical diagnostics by combining comprehensive screening and diagnostic testing, predictive modeling, cutting-edge technologies, and open-access data. Ultimately, Sema4 will help transform how diseases are diagnosed, treated and prevented.
Over the past 20 years, Dr. Schadt has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers in leading scientific journals and contributed to a number of discoveries relating to the genetic basis of common human diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and Alzheimer's disease. He has been recognized as one of "The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds."
View a Sema4 informational video here
The following June 2017 press release discusses Sema4, Dr. Schadt and his team's commitment to changing the health care landscape:
NEW YORK, NY: The Mount Sinai Health System today announced that it has spun out several genetic testing and data sciences components from its Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology into a for-profit company, Sema4.
Sema4 will be led by Eric Schadt, PhD, a pioneer in big data and systems biology and founding Director of the Icahn Institute. Dr. Schadt and his team at Sema4 will build on the success of the Mount Sinai Genetic Testing Laboratory and will continue to collaborate closely with the Mount Sinai Health System.
Sema4 (pronounced \ˈse-mə-ˌfȯr\ "semaphore") aims to revolutionize clinical diagnostics by combining comprehensive screening and diagnostic testing, predictive modeling, cutting-edge technologies, and open-access data.
"We will incorporate patient information—including genetic, environmental, clinical, pharmaceutical, and device data—to model the complexity of disease and wellness and to generate more personalized, precise, and real-time insights for our patients. Ultimately, Sema4 will help transform how diseases are predicted, diagnosed, treated, and prevented," said Dr. Schadt, CEO of Sema4 as well as Dean for Precision Medicine and the Jean C. and James W. Crystal Professor of Genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine.
Sema4 combines more than 160 years of experience within Mount Sinai, including cutting-edge clinical expertise, world-class academic research, and pioneering information science. Sema4 will continue to offer high-quality genetic testing developed through years of research and patient interaction at Mount Sinai Health System. This includes its market-leading offering, Sema4 Expanded Carrier Screen (formerly NextStep), which tests for 281 genetic diseases by using six different testing technologies to provide a more meaningful result for patients. The Sema4 diagnostics menu will be quickly expanded to include an enhanced non-invasive prenatal test, newborn screening, and oncology testing.
Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, commented: "The launch of Sema4 is a natural extension of Mount Sinai's vision to unlock and apply discoveries, clinical testing, and data-powered approaches that will drive greater health. We look forward to collaborating closely with the Sema4 team and to rapidly deploying the tools they develop throughout the Mount Sinai Health System."
Spinning out of Mount Sinai will allow Sema4 to raise the capital it needs to dramatically scale its genetic testing business and data sciences capabilities in order to collect and analyze significantly more data, and to build and implement platforms that enable patients and providers to fully make use of its analyses and diagnostic interpretations for clinical decision-making. As it expands, Sema4 will actively engage patients and physicians across the country with products that will transform molecular diagnostics through information-rich offerings and promote longer-term relationship with and knowledge about one's health.
Sema4 will also build new digital platforms to engage patients and empower them to take control of their longitudinal health data, while facilitating analysis of the data to improve well-being. Sema4 is committed to being the first to create such platforms and expand the availability of digital health, enabling aggregation across all institutions and putting the patient first in that journey so that that they can benefit the most from that data.
"During our time at Mount Sinai, the team now launching Sema4 has been committed to enabling patients to take charge of their data and be active participants in choosing a healthier life. We have spent years proving the value of multiscale biology and are eager to scale this at the national level," said Dr. Schadt. "We will break down silos by openly sharing our information platform, network models, and data with the biomedical community, academic medical centers, and nonprofit researchers around the world. Providing broad access to data, rather than hoarding it or restricting its use, is a proven path to accelerating new discoveries and drastically improving patient care. Our efforts are designed to empower the patient to take their own data and share it with whomever they want during their lifetime."
Mount Sinai has made a substantial investment in Sema4 and in the future of genetic research, diagnostics, and next-generation treatments. "By creating Sema4, we can bring this tremendous expertise to a national audience and use what we learn from the broader population to help us deliver better care to our Mount Sinai patients, shaping health care for decades to come," said Kenneth L. Davis, MD, President and CEO of the Mount Sinai Health System.
Sema4 will have a staff of more than 300, including scientists, doctors, engineers, clinicians, genetic counselors, and business leaders. Spearheading our diagnostic operations are Lisa Edelmann, PhD, Sema4's Chief Diagnostics Officer and long-time Executive Director of the Mount Sinai Genetic Testing Laboratory in New York City, and Todd Arnold, PhD, Chief Laboratory Operations Officer.
About Sema4
Sema4 is an interdisciplinary health information company that is committed to providing open access to data and creating practical tools that help patients, clinicians, and researchers better predict health trajectories. Formerly the Mount Sinai Genetic Testing Lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Sema4 is constructing a more comprehensive picture of health by combining a wealth of clinical experience that informs the answers that patients and providers are seeking, the world-class academic research that illuminates new directions, and the pioneering information science that puts all the pieces together. And we are sharing the data so each patient's journey helps everyone complete the greater picture.