The Launch Place invests $250,000 in Panacea BioMatx
DANVILLE, Va. (Thursday, June 4, 2015) – The Launch Place announced today that it is investing $250,000 in Panacea BioMatx, Inc., to position the company to expand its new personalized medicine technology. This patent-pending technology is a combination of robotic manufacturing and software designed to replace the need for a person to take multiple pills daily.
According to the National Institute of Health, precision medicine is an emerging approach for long-term disease management and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person. While significant advances in precision medicine have been made for select cancers, the practice is not currently in use for most chronic diseases. Many efforts are underway to help make precision medicine the norm rather than the exception. To accelerate the pace, President Obama unveiled the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) earlier this year - a bold new enterprise to revolutionize medicine and generate the scientific evidence needed to move the concept of precision medicine into every day clinical practice.
In return of this investment, Panacea will expand this new operation to Danville’s River District and access The Launch Place’s wrap around entrepreneurship and business consulting services.
Panacea is headquartered in the Research Triangle Park, N.C.
“Panacea combines peer-reviewed scientific research, with easy to navigate online surveys and a patent pending robotic platform to create truly personalized dietary supplement formulations in a single easy to swallow pouch,” said The Launch Place President & CEO Eva Doss.
“This solution uses great tasting whole foods versus a handfuls of pills to tailor nutritional supplements for each body. We are thrilled to help recruit an advanced flexible manufacturer to the region,” she said.
Panacea CEO Edison Hudson said the company’s mission is simple: “People are very different genetically and metabolically so there is a clear case for personalization based on profile data and medical condition. Panacea has created a platform that allows integration of personal data with cost effective use of robotics to produce truly customized healthcare solutions.”
Co-founders Hudson and L. Staton Noel III are motivated by the challenges associated with nutritional deficiencies and poor compliance due to “pill burden,” and felt there should be a way to enable not only healthy people, but also those with chronic disease and swallowing difficulties to receive the nutrition they need.
Noel’s career in biotech and pharmaceutical research focused on the chronic diseases associated with aging, the biology of aging and the underlying genetic mechanisms. Hudson has extensive experience in creating and delivering highly sophisticated robotics and manufacturing automation. The two talents combined to create Panacea in 2013.
Hudson indicated, “Panacea’s custom-made formulas can be adapted or changed as we age and enter different stages of life. Potential drug or medical condition interactions may be identified up front to allow the consumer to make their best possible educated decision about the amounts and types of supplements they consume,” he said. “This is a game changer for the industry.”
Hudson noted that Danville has great resources for a young company to enable rapid expansion. The region’s emphasis on manufacturing, and the Launch Place’s strong support for entrepreneurship, made an agreement logical for the company.
The Launch Place assists with entrepreneurship and business development, and job creation and retention through its business consulting, mentoring and training, residential and office subsidies, and two seed investment funds in the Dan River region of Virginia.
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