Invitalia supports Dante Labs
All this not in the United States or Japan, where technology has always made great strides, but incredibly in L'Aquila, in the Abruzzo technopole, where there is a cutting-edge laboratory that can perform the complete sequencing of the genome of a human being in 2 days, with absolutely accessible figures.
Dante Labs, an innovative startup from L'Aquila, which has become a world leader in the sector, created it by 2 Abruzzese, now thirty-nine, Andrea Riposati and Mattia Capulli.
Theirs is a good story: friends in high school, they make different university courses, degree in economics for Andrea and biotechnology for Mattia. Work and study both bring them to New York, where they meet again in 2014 and where they decide to start their entrepreneurial adventure, returning to Abruzzo.
Therefore, in 2016 their advanced genomics center was born, among the largest in Europe (almost 1000 square meters), which in 3 years analyzed and sequenced in full 15,000 DNA of as many customers, almost 4% of all sequences carried out worldwide.
This means that the contribution of this company has been fundamental for the affirmation of Italy in this specific sector. Dante Labs has customers in 90 countries around the world, although a large part of the turnover comes from the US market.
To achieve this, of course, it was essential to have an ad hoc IT infrastructure that would conduct big data analysis with reduced times and costs, automate reports etc. And that is what they are equipped with internally, also thanks to the contribution of Smart & Start Italia, which financed the project in 2018 with about 350 thousand euros, also supporting the purchase of cutting-edge machinery.
Today Dante Labs, which has 11 employees and closed 2019 with around 2 million euros in turnover, is working on 'Ulisse', a project that aims to build a map of the Mediterranean genome. Once completed, it will allow to face scientific studies without having to refer to the only genome available today, which is the Anglo-Saxon one.
In October 2019 the company was also admitted to the facilities of Law 181/89, the incentive for the revitalization of the areas affected by industrial and sector crises. The investment program aims at expanding the production unit of Pizzoli, in the province of L'Aquila, with the aim of internalising all the phases of the production process and in particular those relating to the preparation of libraries for DNA sequencing, currently carried out from genetic laboratories in the USA.
Given the large amount of data collected, the prospects of the 2 entrepreneurs who work to improve people's lifestyle and increase disease prevention become promising and ambitious: certainly their innovative technology can be made available to end users, but also of the public and private health system.
From here to the realization of customized solutions in the pharmaceutical field, the step is really short.