Hepatopredict – Ophiomics

Building a better future for cancer patients

Cancer is a global killer. We bring clinicians and technology together to develop the tools that enable early detection and the selection of the best curative treatments.

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Ophiomics- Precision Medicine

Ophiomics is a Biotech company developing new diagnostic products and services integrating bioinformatics, artificial inteligence and genomics in support of diagnostic, prognostic, pharmacogenomics and clinical follow up in oncology.

Vision

This is our narrative, how we see ourselves

We aim to become a global leader in the development of AI-powered IVD tests in the cancer space, working with clinicians to develop a portfolio of technology driven, cost-effective products with a global reach and significantly impacts health outcomes.

Leadership

Executive team

Jose Leal, PhD (CEO)

José Pereira Leal, PhD, is a bioinformatician with close to 20 years professional experience…

Dr. José Pereira-Leal has a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Oporto (Portugal), having performed all the thesis research work at the Imperial College School o Medicine (London, UK) and the Souwestern Medical School at Dallas (Texas, USA). His PhD thesis focused on the biochemistry and bioinformatics of proteins involved in genetic diseases.

Joana Vaz, PhD (CSO)

Joana Cardoso Vaz, PhD, is a specialist in cancer Genomics, with ample experience collaborating with clinicians…

Dr. Joana Cardoso Vaz has an MSc in Human Genetics from the School of Medicine of the University of Lisbon (Portugal), and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Leiden (Netherlands). During her PhD research she specialised in cancer genomics, with a focus on colo-rectal cancer. As a post doctoral fellow she worked at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular and at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência using genomics technologies (NGS, microarrays, qPCR) to study mechanism and markers of cancer progression (Breast, Liver and Oesophageal Cancer).

Leadership

Board of Directors

Leadership

Advisors

Ophiomics

Our history

Ophiomics was founded in 2015 by José Pereira Leal and Joana Cardoso Vaz, two scientists that had previously worked together at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia. We initially established Ophiomics as a clinical testing laboratory focused in oncology, that pioneered in Portugal the routine somatic sequencing, liquid biopsies, high throughput sequencing for cancer genetics. Through strong innovation in in bioinformatics and genomics, and in partnership with the Centro de Medicina Laboratorial Germano de Sousa, the largest Portuguese clinical pathology group, we were able to bring cost effective, timely actionable results to clinical centres throughout Portugal and beyond.

But both of us yearned to pursue innovation, and in collaboration with a liver transplant surgeon (Hugo Pinto Marques), started developing a new biomarker-based algorithm to stratify liver cancer patients for curative-intent liver transplantation. The preliminary results we obtained were so encouraging that we made the difficult choice of pivoting our efforts so that we could take this new idea to market, with the Centro de Medicina Laboratorial Germano de Sousa taking over our previous business model. In May 2020, with the support of the first generation of the ultra-competitive EIC Accelerator grants, we launched Ophiomics (2.0), a company focused on developing innovative, AI-assisted In Vitro Diagnostics Medical Devices, and two and a half years later, launched ou first product, HepatoPredict, our liver cancer gene expression signature. This is just the beginning!

Ophiomics

Precision Medicine

When we first decided to established Ophiomics, we wanted a company name that would reflect our origins and the science and technology we develop. “OPHI” comes from the Greek word for serpent Ophis. Our company was born in a region that the ancient Greeks named Ophiussa (meaning Land of Serpents), which is now the Portuguese territory near the mouth of the river Tagus (Lisbon). The serpent/snake has also been traditionally a symbol for medicine, as part of the Rod of Asclepius, the greek god associated to medicine and healing. So OPHI seemed a good starting point for the name of a company located in the Land of Serpents and developing products for medicine. As for out technology, it was natural to add the sufix “OMICS” as the development of our products is based on probing and analysing a large amount of data coming from high-throughput technologies such as genomics, transcriptomics, etc. So OPHIOMICS was born!