WoW Woman in Health Tech I Charlotte Guzzo, COO and co-founder of Sano Genetics
Charlotte Guzzo is COO and co-founder of Sano Genetics, which accelerates precision medicine research into chronic and rare diseases, including ulcerative colitis, a type of irritable bowel disease. Prior to launching their healthtech startup, Charlotte was studying genomics at the University of Cambridge, where she specialised in the embryonic origins of childhood cancer, and where she met her two co-founders.
Sano Genetics is a healthtech startup that helps patients with rare and chronic diseases – including Long Covid, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s – take part in personalised medicine research from their own homes. It’s building a first-of-its-kind digital biobank of ulcerative colitis patients – that includes genomic, clinical, and patient-reported data – which will be a vital tool for helping researchers develop future treatment options and gain a better understanding of the genetics of this inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Tell us a bit about your background and your projects so far.
I started my career as a risk analyst at JP Morgan but quickly moved into science, studying postgraduate genomics and specialising in the embryonic origins of childhood cancer, at the University of Cambridge. There I met fellow students Patrick Short and William Jones, who I went on to co-found Sano Genetics with.
We find patients living with chronic diseases, match them to live studies in genetic disease research, and provide them with free and ‘at home’ DNA testing kits. Through the end-to-end platform we’ve built, all our participants have total control over how their data is used and they can withdraw from studies at any time. They also get regular updates on the research they’ve been involved in, keeping them engaged and informed, and they can choose to receive personalised content too, such as genetic reports.
We’ve transformed the experience of participating in research which usually involves travel, time off work, and absolutely no incentives, or updates about the impact of your contribution.
How did you get into this industry? Has it been an easy industry to get into or have you had many challenges?
The pharmaceutical and clinical trial industry is perhaps one of the most challenging to get into. It is heavily regulated (for good reasons), often relies on outdated infrastructure, has long sales cycles, and tends to be averse to change. It is quite the opposite of what a startup stands for. In spite of this – or perhaps because of it – it’s a fascinating industry to disrupt because the downstream impact is huge. I went into entrepreneurship because I wanted to make a difference and after a few years of building Sano, I am more convinced than ever that there is a huge scope for things to change for the better.
How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle? What are the challenges of being in the industry you are in?
Building a successful company takes years and years of hard work. Coming up with a great idea is only the starting point. I think what we often gloss over in entrepreneurial stories is what comes next: the painstaking process of continuously refining your idea, understanding the market, watching the competition, and finding new business opportunities. Our business has evolved over the years into something quite different from the one we first envisioned back in 2016.
Our biggest challenge as we scale up is to find the right balance between growth and stability. You constantly have to re-assess when it’s time to double down on new projects and when it’s time to consolidate and achieve high standards of delivery.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
We’ve raised almost $15M in venture capital funding and received a number of non-dilutive innovation grants, including £350k in funding from Innovate UK to co-develop our platform with Genomics England for use in large-scale rare disease research, and a further £130k from Innovate UK to fund our at-home genetic testing and digital data collection study for people living with Long Covid.
In the past year, we’ve powered groundbreaking precision medicine research in a range of diseases (ulcerative colitis, NAFLD/NASH, Long Covid, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, and ankylosing spondylitis).
We’ve also grown our customer base, increasing revenue by 400%, expanded our product to include data-compliant versions for the US, Canada, and Australia, with EU countries next in line, and continued to expand our team.
What are the projects you are currently working on?
At the moment, we’re working on expanding to 6+ new countries, and 50+ new diseases. We’re also always refining and perfecting the online patient experience.
Is the #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why?
To put it simply: tech won’t serve women if women are not in tech. We are all aware of the huge advances tech can deliver, particularly in healthcare, and it is important to me that this benefits women too.
What will be the key trends in your industry in the next five years and where do you see them heading?
Precision medicine is going to be a big topic in the next five years. It’s already changing the way we prevent and treat disease, but this is only the beginning. Today, it costs about £30 to genotype someone and as we progress in our understanding of how genetics influence disease progression, I am expecting that it will play a much bigger role in healthcare. But genetics is only the start and I am excited to see over the next decades what other assays we can bring into clinical practice to improve patients’ outcomes.
What is the most important piece of advice you could give to anyone who wants to start a career in this industry?
It takes time to understand it, to identify the right stakeholders to talk to, and to find a business model which adds enough value for the industry to want to adopt change. It is not an industry in which you can get a quick win, but the long-term prospects are worth the hard work.
Who are three inspirational women in your perspective?
Can I choose five, please?!
Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier for their work developing gene editing technologies that may well completely change the future of healthcare and impact the lives of millions of individuals.
Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, for managing her country brilliantly yet quietly through the Covid crisis and for giving birth to her first child whilst being in office.
My mother and mother-in-law. The former is for her relentlessness in getting seemingly impossible things done and the latter for managing to care for others while pushing the boundaries of our understanding of plant sciences.
Join us on November 16 for our FemTech Untapped event “Innovations in gut and metabolic health” where Charlotte will be one of the speakers.
This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder, and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic and read her stories for Forbes here.