OvaScience
| Public | |
| Traded as | NASDAQ: OVAS |
| Industry | Biotechnology, infertility treatment |
| Founder | Michelle Dipp, Richard Aldrich, Christoph Westphal, Jonathan Tilly, and David Sinclair |
| Website | http://www.ovascience.com/ |
OvaScience is a publicly traded biotechnology company, focused on female infertility. It was founded in 2011 by Michelle Dipp, Richard Aldrich, Christoph Westphal, Jonathan Tilly, and David Sinclair based on scientific work done by Tilly concerning mammalian oogonial stem cells and work on by Sinclair. Tilly's work was controversial, with some groups unable to replicate it.
As of December 2016, the company was developing two in vitro fertilization services. In one service, which it calls "Augment", it would harvest putative oogonial stem cells from a woman, extract from those cells, and inject them into an oocyte from the woman, along with sperm, in a form of augmented intracytoplasmic sperm injection ("ICSI"). In the other, which it calls "OvaTure," it would harvest putative oogonial stem cells from a woman, mature them into oocytes in vitro, and then fertilize them with ICSI. It had introduced the Augment service in 2014 in ten clinics located in the United Arab Emirates, Canada and Japan.
The company's claims about its services were controversial from their first announcements. Additionally, Dipp, Aldrich, Westphal, and Sinclair had previously worked together to found and develop Sirtris Pharmaceuticals around Sinclair's work on resveratrol — the company was sold to GlaxoSmithKline in 2008 for around $720 million and then was absorbed into GSK in 2013 after reservatrol was abandoned in 2010; Dipp, Westphal, and Aldrich were also involved in Alnara Pharmaceuticals, which was sold to Eli Lilly in 2010 for around $180 million and was also later abandoned by its purchaser when its technology failed.
The company's A financing round was $6 million, financed by Longwood Fund and Bessemer Venture Partners, and it raised a $37 million B round in early 2012, funded by General Catalyst, BBT Capital Management Advisors, Cycad Group, Hunt BioVentures, RA Capital, Longwood, Bessemer, and other undisclosed investors.
...
Wikipedia