Emerald Cloud Lab

Emerald Cloud Lab (ECL) is a privately-owned biotech startup. The company focuses on advancing laboratory virtualization, for chemistry and biotechnology, by building the first fully functional cloud lab, allowing scientists to conduct all of their wet lab research without being in a physical laboratory.[1]

Emerald Cloud Lab
TypePrivate
PredecessorEmerald Therapeutics
Founded2010 (2010)
Founder
  • D.J. Kleinbaum
  • Brian Frezza
Headquarters
South San Francisco, California
,
United States
Websiteemeraldcloudlab.com

Products and services

ECL is a physical laboratory that can be accessed remotely by scientists via the internet. Scientists ship samples to an ECL facility and design their experiments in the ECL Command Center software application. ECL Command Center is a fully integrated application, where experiments are encoded in a language and grammar designed by ECL to allow remote operation and ensure reproducibility. ECL remotely conducts your experiments in a highly automated ECL facility exactly to the scientist’s specifications. The platform collects and organizes all data generated by and relevant to experiments into a powerful knowledge graph. ECL Command Center’s extensive suite of tools can then be used to plot, analyze, and visualize results.[2]

History

Founding

D.J. Kleinbaum and Brian Frezza grew up together on Emerald Drive outside of Philadelphia. In 2010, after completing their PhDs, they came together to found Emerald Therapeutics in an effort to develop "antiviral therapeutics for diseases such as HPV and HIV". During this time, they experienced frustrations with laboratory hardware and software. Hardware often comes from disparate manufacturers, software is often rudimentary, and output can vary in formatting. To simplify laboratory testing, the group wrote centralized management software for the different machines and a database to store all metadata and results.[3] This "laboratory operating system" continued to expand in capabilities, including the ability to directly control instrumentation and manage inventory and procurement. Recognizing the value this type of system presented outside of their own development goals, Kleinbaum and Frezza launched this service in 2014 under the name Emerald Cloud Lab.[4] In 2016, Emerald Cloud Lab and Emerald Therapeutics were spun off from one another, and both are independent corporations.[5][6]

Business development

As of 2014, Emerald Cloud Lab offered access to 40 types of laboratory instruments.[3] By 2017, the range of instruments had expanded to 106.[7] As of July 2020, Emerald Cloud Lab offered full control of over 150 laboratory instruments, with plans to expand capabilities outlined through 2021.[2]

Researchers and pharmaceutical groups have long been concerned about the lack of reproducibility of laboratory testing in the biomedical field. A 2017 literature analysis article posited that highly automated, internet connected labs like ECL could ameliorate the problem. The paper concludes that, "we believe that robotic labs can provide the basis for performing a large percentage of basic biomedical research in a reproducible and transparent fashion".[8] Frezza has described this laboratory inconsistency as one specific reason for the development of Emerald Cloud Lab and the use of automation.[9]

Financing

After spinning out of Emerald Therapeutics, the company has gone on to raise capital in multiple rounds. Key investors include Founders Fund,[10] Schooner Capital,[11] OS Fund,[12] Alcazar Capital,[13] Western Technology Investment,[14] Sound Ventures,[15] SciFi VC,[16] Incite Ventures,[17] and Spike Ventures.[13]

The business got its second round of funding by 2014 from the Founders Fund (FF), a venture capital firm founded by Peter Thiel, bringing total funding raised from FF up to $13.5 million.[3] The first FF funding round was not public.[4]

References
  1. Mouratidis, Yiannis. "A Cloud Lab Dedicated To Cancer Drug Discovery". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  2. "How the ECL Works". www.emeraldcloudlab.com. Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  3. Vance, Ashlee (3 July 2014). "Emerald Therapeutics: Biotech Lab for Hire". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 5 July 2017. Retrieved 30 October 2019.
  4. Temple, James (30 June 2014). "Founders Fund Backs a Robotic Lab that Puts Science in the Cloud". Vox. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  5. Emerald Cloud Lab, Inc., California Corporation Entity Number C3251573. See "Amended Statement by Foreign Corporation" (PDF). California Secretary of State. November 10, 2016. Retrieved July 30, 2020.
  6. "Emerald Cloud Lab - Biocom". Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  7. Groth, Paul; Cox, Jessica (2017), “Datasets for Potential of Robotic Lab Methods Usage in Biomedical Papers”, Mendeley Data, v3 http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/gy7bfzcgyd.3#file-2066813b-adc9-425e-a347-51122bdbe944
  8. Groth, P.; Cox, J. (2017). "Indicators for the use of robotic labs in basic biomedical research: A literature analysis". PeerJ. 5: e3997. doi:10.7717/peerj.3997. PMC 5681851. PMID 29134146.
  9. Garner, Rochelle. "Science labs in the cloud: Champagne discoveries, beer budget". Cnet. Archived from the original on 28 October 2015. Retrieved 29 October 2019.
  10. "Emerald Cloud Lab". Founders Fund. Retrieved 2020-07-31.
  11. "Portfolio". SCHOONER CAPITAL. Retrieved 2020-07-31.
  12. "Portfolio Companies". OS Fund. Retrieved 2020-07-31.
  13. "AVG Focused Fund Portfolio of Investments". Alumni Ventures Group. Retrieved 2020-07-31.
  14. "Portfolio". WTI. Retrieved 2020-07-31.
  15. PhD, @Marina T. Alamanou (2019-10-07). "Artificial Intelligence in Preclinical Design and Execution: Investors and Startups". Medium. Retrieved 2020-07-31.
  16. "SciFi VC". scifi.vc. Retrieved 2020-07-31.
  17. Incite. "Ventures". Incite. Retrieved 2020-07-31.
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