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Dr. Elaine Mardis Joins Pacific Biosciences Scientific Advisory Board

By Amarendra Bhushan for CEOWORLD Magazine Updated:November 20, 2008

-Pacific Biosciences, a private company developing third-generation DNA sequencing technology, announced today that Elaine Mardis, Ph.D., co-director of The Genome Center at Washington University School of Medicine, has joined its Scientific Advisory Board.

The company also announced that it recently received $20 million in funding from a new investor, Blackstone Cleantech Venture Partners, bringing the total amount of capital raised in its latest financing round to $120 million. These funds will be used to support the company’s efforts to bring its Single-Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT™) DNA sequencing platform to market by the second half of 2010. Pacific Biosciences has raised a total of $193 million since the company was founded in 2004.

Pacific Biosciences is a pioneer in the development of single-molecule, real-time DNA sequencing technology, which the company believes will replace other techniques to become the “gold standard” for DNA analysis and enable sequencing of individual genomes as part of routine medical care.

“The addition of a world-renowned expert on DNA sequencing to our Scientific Advisory Board, combined with another vote of confidence from the investment community, continues to demonstrate the strength of our company’s position as the leader in third-generation sequencing technology,” said Hugh Martin, chairman and chief executive officer of Pacific Biosciences. “We look forward to the opportunity to benefit from the great experience and expertise Dr. Mardis offers in the field of DNA sequencing as we continue to ramp up our commercial development efforts.”

Dr. Mardis has worked at The Genome Center at Washington University School of Medicine since 1993. In addition to her role as co-director of The Genome Center, Dr. Mardis serves as an associate professor of genetics and molecular microbiology. As director of technology development, she helped develop methods and automation pipelines to support the international Human Genome Project. Prior to joining The Genome Center, Dr. Mardis was a senior research scientist at BioRad Laboratories in Hercules, CA. She holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Chemistry and a B.S. in Zoology from the University of Oklahoma.

“Having spent most of my career evaluating new and next-generation DNA sequencing technologies, I am convinced that Pacific Biosciences has the technology that will allow for dramatic advances in sequencing and truly enable ultra fast, accurate and inexpensive DNA sequencing,” said Dr. Mardis. “The revolution that this transformative technology could enable has the potential to truly change the face of genomic science and healthcare.”

Dr. Mardis joins the following existing Pacific Biosciences Scientific Advisory Board members: Joseph V. Bonventre M.D., Ph.D. (Harvard Medical School, MIT, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Research Institute), Harold Craighead, Ph.D. (Cornell University), Harry Barkus Gray, Ph.D. (California Institute of Technology), David Haussler, Ph.D. (UC Santa Cruz, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford Medical School, UC San Francisco), Chenming Calvin Hu, Ph.D. (University of California, Berkeley), Kenneth A. Johnson, Ph.D. (University of Texas at Austin, KinTek Company), Roger Kornberg, Ph.D. (Stanford University), and Watt W. Webb, Sc.D. (Cornell University).

About Pacific Biosciences

Pacific Biosciences is a private company based in Menlo Park, California. The company was founded in 2004 with the goal of developing a transformative SMRT™ (Single-Molecule, Real-Time) DNA sequencing platform that will become the new gold standard for genetic analysis. The SMRT™ technology is built upon two key innovations that overcome major challenges facing the field of DNA sequencing. The first is the SMRT™ chip, which enables observation of individual fluorophores against a dense background of labeled nucleotides by maintaining a high signal-to-noise ratio. The second are phospholinked nucleotides, which produce a completely natural DNA strand through fast, accurate, and processive DNA synthesis. The company has received an Advanced Sequencing Technology Award grant from the NHGRI (National Human Genome Research Institute) to develop the $1,000 genome.

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