Abstract
Around 95% of the population has a gene variant that affects how we respond to at least one drug, often based on how well our bodies break down the molecule. If the drug is broken down by a patient’s body more slowly than normal, for example, the patient can experience more side effects than others.
For this reason, pharmacogenomics is a critical component of precision medicine, which aims to provide safe and effective medications tailored to a patient’s genome.
The global market for pharmacogenomics was worth $7.6 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow by 8.1% per year to $12.4 billion by 2030. At the same time, the market for artificial intelligence (AI) tools in pharmacogenomics is set to skyrocket by 23.9% per year, from $1.8 billion in 2024 to $12.6 billion by 2033, as demand grows and healthcare systems aim to cut adverse drug reactions.
Amid this expansion, acquirers are on the lookout for pharmacogenomics assets, with deals including the takeovers of Telos PGx by Principle Health Systems and of Corriel Life Sciences by InformedDNA in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
Meanwhile, investors are keen to nurture what might be the next big pharmacogenomics startups. Here is our take on five recent investor favorites below.
GenXys
GenXys was spun out of the University of British Columbia by physician and professor Martin Dawes, MD, based on software that can help physicians prescribe tailored drug doses in primary care without needing to use trial-and-error approaches.
GenXys’s TreatGx uses patient pharmacogenetic data to recommend treatment options, with examples including donepezil in Alzheimer’s disease and carvedilol for hypertension.
“It is making all of this genetic allele ‘stuff’ clinically relevant to us in family medicine, which is where we want it,” Dawes told the MedicsVoices podcast in 2023.
Another product, called OptimizeGx, aims to automate the process of prior authorization, wherein insurance companies check whether they will cover certain treatments. The tool can reduce the cost per authorization from $20 to $7, cut the processing time from 24 hours to two hours, and halve denial rates to 7.5%, according to GenXys’ website.
GenXys has raised around $3.4 million (CAD 4.8 million) since its founding, including a seed round worth $2.2 million (CAD 3 million) in 2021. The firm is using the cash to expand in the North American market and beyond.
The startup has the backing of Canadian investors like the nonprofit GreenShield Canada, digital healthcare-focused venture capital firm Esplanade Ventures, and the strategic investment arm of the digital and communications company TELUS.
Kadance
Co-founded by industry heavyweight David Stertzer, the company was originally known as healthŌme and rebranded in January this year to reflect the rhythm of life and health.
Complete with an in-house genetics lab, Kadance offers a plan of pharmacogenetic tests and consulting services to critical illness and life insurance carriers to optimize medications and boost engagement by the policyholder.
As part of the model, the insurance carrier’s customer can undergo genetic tests to find out if their treatments are optimal as well as how likely they are to develop cancer based on their genome. If an insured patient is already diagnosed with cancer, Kadance can genetically profile the patient and recommend the most appropriate treatments before arranging for post-treatment recurrence screening.
Kadance acquired Kailos Genetics, partner and fellow resident at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, in 2023. The acquisition granted Kadance access to Kailos’s genetic testing lab, which has tested at least 50,000 patients and detected at least seven million variants since its founding in 2010.
The company raised a seed financing round in 2024, led by the tech and insurance-focused venture capital investors American Family Ventures and AllegisNL Capital. It is using the money to expand its operational infrastructure and offerings.
Kadance also secured a partnership with Florida-based GalenusRx in 2024 to blend its genomics technology with the latter’s platform that provides tailored medication safety assessments based on drug interactions and the patient’s DNA.
NeuroKaire
Formerly known as Genetika+, NeuroKaire arose after CEO and co-founder Talia Cohen Solal, PhD, decided to apply her academic work in brain models to patients with psychiatric disorders such as depression.
The process of finding an optimal depression treatment “takes months to years of the patients’ lives, or even their [whole] lives,” said Cohen Solal on the podcast B’nai B’rith International in 2024. “They lose their life place, sometimes relationships with their family, and their jobs.”
To address this issue, NeuroKaire takes a blood sample from a patient and cultures their cells into neurons in the lab. From there, it tests the cultures with different treatments like selegiline and mirtazapine. It then uses pharmacogenetics and AI to predict the optimal drug for that patient, saving time and healthcare costs.
The test, which is commercially available in the U.S., Europe, and Israel, costs $995 and may be partially covered by private insurance in some places, according to NeuroKaire’s website.
The company also uses its brain model databanks from more than 120,000 patients to speed up drug development with its pharmaceutical partners by helping them stratify patients and compare different drug candidates. One example is the Israeli–U.S. company NeuroSense Therapeutics, which partnered with NeuroKaire in 2024 to quantify drug-induced changes to the brain cells of patients with Alzheimer’s disease to support a Phase II trial.
NeuroKaire has raised around $24 million so far, including $10 million in a round led by the U.S. firm GreyBird Ventures in 2024. The team is using the cash to scale its operations, grow its team, and fuel its research and development, with plans to expand its technology to different neurological diseases. NeuroKaire also expects to expand its partnerships with pharmaceutical companies to accelerate drug discovery and development.
PGxAI
PGxAI was established by a team including its co-founder and CEO Mike Zack, MD, PhD, who has a background as a physician and postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.
Patients can send in a mouth swab for genetic testing, and the firm’s labs use a blend of pharmacogenomics, real-world data, and generative AI models to recommend personalized treatments to the healthcare providers. This can also improve the bottom line of insurers by cutting the need for patients to visit hospitals for adverse drug events.
Its technology also can help contract research organizations and pharmaceutical companies to streamline trial design, for example, by recruiting the patients most likely to benefit from a treatment.
PGxAI has raised around $2 million, including a $1.5 million round in December 2024. The team is using the money to boost its growth and product offerings like VectorSearch and GenAI.
PGxAI is partnered with the patient data provider InterSystems, which helped incubate the startup. Other partners include Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.
PGxAI is already a profitable company and has the ambition to reach unicorn status in 3 to 4 years, Zack said on the Digital Health Venture Conversations podcast in 2024.
Stalicla
Stalicla was established by CEO Lynn Durham to bring precision medicine to the treatment of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diseases, which is one of the least evidence-based disciplines in medicine.
Her connection with these conditions is also personal, as her own brother and son have autism, she told PharmaVoice in 2022.
The firm uses AI to analyze a range of omics datasets, like transcriptomics and pharmacogenomics, and develop personalized treatments. Its lead candidate STP1 is in Phase II development for the treatment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
STP1 combines two drugs called ibudilast and bumetanide to target a subset of patients with ASD, called Phenotype 1. It showed promise in improving brain function in these patients in Phase Ib trials.
Another program in Stalicla’s pipeline is STP2, a Phase I-stage candidate treatment for ASD Phenotype 2 that was licensed from the U.K. firm TheraCryf (formerly Evgen) for up to $160.5 million in 2022.
This year, the firm also plans to launch Phase III trials of STP7, consisting of formulations of the drug mavoglurant licensed from Novartis in 2023, for the treatment of substance use disorders.
Stalicla has raised around $56 million, including a $17.4 million Series B round in 2024 led by the healthcare specialist SPRIM Global Investments, and a $2.5 million (CHF 2 million) corporate round led by the Swiss firm Addex Therapeutics in June this year.