San Francisco-based TenSixteen Bio announced its launch with the closing of a $40 million Series A financing round, led by Foresite Capital and GV, formerly Google Ventures. The startup’s work focuses on those mutations and cells known as “clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential,” or CHIP, that are indicators of diseases like cancer and cardiovascular diseases. TenSixteen’s goal is to develop new therapeutics that could help treat the diseases that CHIP testing can identify.
While genes are inherited at birth, much of disease is caused by the human genome changing over the course of a lifetime through mutations that accumulate in cells as one ages. There are approximately 1016 cell divisions in the human body during a lifetime and each is an opportunity for mutation, leading to a patchwork of genetically distinct cells-a process called somatic mosaicism.
Over the last decade, researchers have discovered a form of somatic mosaicism in the blood – called CHIP, that results from mutations in a set of cancer-associated genes. These CHIP mutations lead to pre-malignant states that influence a spectrum of diseases. CHIP mutations confer a significant risk of developin…
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