Today we announced a novel alliance with Monsanto to identify new life science technologies and explore the potential for creating/investing in new seed-stage startups around them. It’s an exciting collaboration that brings a complementary set of interests, capabilities, and access together.
Although Monsanto’s interest is clearly in the agricultural applications, the technologies we’re jointly interested in have broader application across the life science spectrum. A shortlist, though certainly not comprehensive, of areas of interest would include:
- Genomic technologies & sequencing
- mRNA expression analysis
- Protein optimization, engineering, analysis
- Regulatory RNA analysis, interrogation
- Quantitative genetic analysis, detection
- Computational biology/systems biology
- Predictive modeling
- Informatics, data analysis and visualization
- Lab automation
- Digital imaging, microscopy
- Microfluidics
In addition, as the press release notes and as an indication of the commitment to this multi-year effort, this alliance will be bringing on board two professionals to work closely with the our teams.
We’re excited about this new strategic initiative – looking forward to planting a few seeds here and investing in some great companies.
Don’t be shy about reaching out with ideas or directing cool technologies our way.
