Nome is building an AI-powered drug development service for ultra-rare disease patients, helping families identify potential treatments and map out a path from diagnosis to clinical development.
The startup targets patient groups often overlooked by traditional pharma.
Founder Stevie Ringel's own rare genetic disease inspired the company, which now oversees more than 10 genetic medicine programs.
Jacalyn Lee, founder of The DAND Alliance, and her youngest daughter Isla:
Jacalyn Lee
"We were handed this diagnosis, and little else. There was no roadmap, barely any research, no community that I was aware of at the time," Jacalyn said.
She and four other mothers launched The DAND Alliance, a group that was able to raise money towards developing a treatment.
"We were trying to figure out where should we spend money, knowing that we only have so much," Lee said.
The group turned to Nome for help, a startup trying to position itself as a contract research organization, or CRO, dedicated to serving smaller rare disease groups that the pharma industry does not often cater to.
"We act with patient-level urgency and are highly focused on providing a roadmap forward for an underserved part of the market," said Stevie Ringel, Nome's founder and CEO.
Nome currently does between 80 and 100 of these reports per month, and Ringel says the company has identified a programmable medicine or an existing custom medical therapy that fits the known mutation about 25% of the time.
