It's been an exciting year here at Congenica. We have welcomed new appointments both in the UK and across our ever expanding network of international satellite offices, new clients in new territories and new enhancements and refinements of our platform, Sapientia.

Following a successful Series B funding in February, Congenica have been able to continue spreading our wings. It's very exciting to have overseen the opening of our first overseas offices on the American coasts, Philadelphia, PA, and San Diego, CA. The two cities and their regions share a lot of the characteristics that we prize about our home city of Cambridge, as they boast vibrant life sciences sectors, world leading academic institutions and dynamic venture capital atmospheres.

We have entered into a partnership with the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) who are one of the world’s largest DNA sequencers. China is an exciting opportunity for genomics with a large population and need to modernise the healthcare infrastructure combining to make personalised medicine not just possible but preferable as the task they face is orders of magnitude bigger than in any other country. BGI’s work and our partnership with them are exciting parts of everything which is happening and of capitalising on the bounty of genomic data being generated.

Sapientia is specifically how we help them do that by, simply, putting more clinically actionable data in front of the doctors faster and more accurately than anyone else on the market. The latest release represents a significant milestone, with better ClinVar integration and streamlined gene panel management tools, American Council of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) guidelines and a focus on system performance and resilience to drive improvements for all users. Sapientia was nominated at Bio-It World for the Best Practices and Best in Show awards for their innovative use in Thrombogenomics.

As great as these things are, Congenica is much more than just the company and the product. We have deepened our support of patients with struggling with rare disease and their families and carers by working with publication and community Rare Revolution. Nicola Miller and Rebecca Stewart, who operate the and publish the magazine, have launched a new magazine which is run and written by and for children and young people with rare diseases and we are proud to be mentoring some of their young writers.

We have enjoyed attending a number of industry events this year but particular highlights would have to be ESHG and ASHG. The latter was especially good as we held a symposium on impacting clinical diagnostics using rapid and accurate whole exome analysis in which we were delighted to be joined by; Dr. Avinash Abhyankar of the New York Genome Center, Nathalie Chandler of G.O.S.H. and Dr. Yuan Yuan Fu of Fuwai Hospital, experts from around the world mirroring the global expansion of us as a company.

Next year will be even more exciting though as we already have a webinar alongside the amazing Jill Viles lined up for February.

Our Scientific Director, Dr. Matt Hurles, received two very prestigious appointments. The first was his election to the Academy of Medical Sciences which is an independent UK body that promotes and supports medical research. The second was his appointment as the head of the Human Genetics Programme at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, a department he first joined in 2003.

Additionally, Laura Taylor, ACA, our Chief Financial Officer was named as one of the top 50 female leaders in UK life sciences when she was nominated for BioBeat’s, Movers and Shakers in BioBusiness Awards for the second year running.

It's been a great year for Congenica and for the industry as a whole and I’m really proud of the dedicated team in and around Congenica and Sapientia who are making this all happen.