LifeMap Solutions, Inc., a medical technology startup focused on creating innovative mobile health (mHealth) products and services powered by big data, today announced an initial $5 million seed round led by parent company LifeMap Sciences, Inc., a subsidiary of BioTime, Inc., with additional participation via in-kind support from its development partner, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Corey Bridges, a Silicon Valley veteran, will serve as LifeMap Solutions' Chief Executive Officer. Over the past two decades, Bridges has overseen the market introductions of several innovative technology companies, including Netflix, Zone Labs, and The Multiverse Network. A pre-IPO employee at Netscape, he launched several ground-breaking Internet products internationally, and years later launched James Cameron's CAMERON | PACE Group in China and Europe.
"In the mid-nineties, we saw the intersection of breakthrough technologies and cultural readiness that took the Internet into the mainstream and changed the world," Bridges said. "A similar intersection of technology and culture is happening now with personal health and big data, where the impact on society may be as profound and as far-reaching as the Internet has been to the world."
David Warshawsky, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of parent company LifeMap Sciences, and cofounder of LifeMap Solutions with Bridges, brings with him more than 20 years of experience in cutting-edge research, development, implementation, and leadership in biotech, pharmaceutical, and bioinformatics industries.
"The medical technology industry is evolving at a faster pace than anyone predicted even five years ago," Warshawsky said. "These exciting times translate into massive opportunities for innovation. In the years ahead, we intend to apply our industry's best practices and LifeMap's key proprietary technology toward creating mHealth products and services that will serve a range of markets."
Strategic Partnership
LifeMap Solutions is working directly with research scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to develop its technology. As part of the partnership, Mount Sinai's Eric Schadt, Ph.D. - founding director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology - will lend his research experience and technical expertise to LifeMap Solutions as the newly formed company's leading science advisor. Dr. Schadt is an expert on the generation and integration of very large-scale sequence variation, molecular profiling and clinical data in disease populations for constructing molecular networks that define disease states and link molecular biology to physiology.
Core members of the LifeMap Solutions team will work closely with Mount Sinai's world-class research scientists and development personnel. Dr. Schadt said of the partnership, "We're excited to combine Mount Sinai's scientific expertise with LifeMap Solutions' ability to build mobile health application products and services to help people lead healthier lives and contribute to medical research."
The details of the partnership were managed by Mount Sinai Innovation Partners, which facilitates the real-world application and commercialization of Mount Sinai discoveries and the development of research partnerships with industry.
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