Helicos BioSciences Corporation, is a publicly-traded life science company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

 focused on genetic analysis

Genetic analysis

Genetic analysis can be used generally to describe methods both used in and resulting from the sciences of genetics and molecular biology, or to applications resulting from this research....

 technologies for the research, drug discovery and diagnostic markets. The firm's Helicos Genetic Analysis Platform was the first DNA-sequencing instrument to operate by imaging individual DNA molecules. In May 2010, the company announced a 50% layoff and a re-focusing on molecular diagnostics.

Helicos was co-founded in 2003 by life science entrepreneur Stanley Lapidus, Stephen Quake, and Noubar Afeyan with investments from Atlas Venture

Atlas Venture

Atlas Venture is an international early-stage venture capital firm that invests in communications, information technology, and life sciences companies. From the late 1990s through the mid-2000s the firm was leading investor in startup companies in both the U.S. and Europe...

, Flagship Ventures, Highland Capital Partners

Highland Capital Partners

Highland Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that focuses on investments in seed, early, and growth stage companies in the communications, consumer, digital media, healthcare, and information technology sectors. The firm's partners include: Peter Bell, Sean Dalton, Bob Davis, Richard de...

, MPM Capital

MPM Capital

MPM Capital is a private equity firm focused on venture capital investments in early stage companies across a range of sectors in the health care industry including biotechnology, specialty pharma and medical technology....

, and Versant Ventures.

Helicos's technology images the extension of individual DNA molecules using a defined primer and individual fluorescently labeled nucleotides, which contain a "virtual terminator" preventing incorporation of multiple nucleotides per cycle.

In the August 2009 issue of Nature Biotechnology

Nature Biotechnology

Nature Biotechnology is an academic journal covering the science and business of biotechnology.Nature Biotechnology is a continuation of Bio/Technology , which was founded in 1983 and renamed in 1996. It is published monthly by the Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd...

, Dr. Stephen Quake, a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

and a co-founder of Helicos BioSciences, sequenced his own genome, using Single Molecule Sequencing for under $50,000 in reagents.

External links

• Helicos BioSciences Corp. firm website
• leadership team