Cleveland health care technology company GenomOncology LLC announced that it has added Jonathan Seaton, former senior vice president for corporate and business development at Illumina Inc. (Nasdaq: ILMN), to its board of directors.
The addition of Seaton gives GenomOncology a total of six board members. In a news release, Brad Wertz, the executive chairman of GenomOncology, said Seaton will “provide critical guidance for the road ahead” for the company, which has developed a technology platform to streamline the use of next-generation sequencing data in medical care and research. Illumina, based in San Diego, develops and manufactures systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological functions.
Wertz said demand for GenomOncology’s products is “accelerating enormously” and that Seaton’s “deep business development experience in the clinical, genomics and life sciences space will help GenomOncology in bringing our solutions to market for maximum impact to key stakeholders, most especially for cancer patients.”
In addition to Illumina, Seaton’s health care experience includes senior leadership roles at Becton, Dickinson and Roche Diagnostics, GenomOncology said in the release.
“Rapid advancements and accessibility of next-generation sequencing is fundamentally changing the way we understand, diagnose and treat cancer patients,” Seaton said in the release. “It is an exciting time but the field more than ever needs the right tools to take advantage of these technologies and the massive amounts of data being generated for the patient. … Through their novel platform, GenomOncology is enabling new insight generation, research and bringing precision medicine to patients by helping oncologists make better treatment decisions and find clinical trials.”
GenomOncology also said in the release it is “closing a round of capital” with its group of investors based in Cleveland and Nashville “to support the increasing demand” for the company’s products. It did not disclose the amount being raised or the date of the expected close of the funding round.