After competing with 40 startups from different sectors and winning the Brazilian stage, the startup that is building the largest and most diverse gene bank in Latin America is presenting itself to more than 2,500 investors in the global final of the competition

gen-t, the Brazilian startup that is building the largest database of genetic variants in a Latin American population, was the winner of the Brazil stage of Startup World Cup 2024. As a result, it had the opportunity to present the company’s mission to more than 2,500 investors at the global finals in California.

gen-t’s mission is to promote inclusion and diversity in global gene banks, taking advantage of the unique genetic mix present in the Brazilian population. With more than 210 million people, Brazil has 500 years of miscegenation of indigenous, African and European populations, offering unparalleled diversity for medical research and development.

“This victory is a great recognition of the value of what we are building at gen-t and a great opportunity to show the world how the diversity of the Brazilian population can advance medicine,” said Lygia da Veiga Pereira, CEO of gen-t.

The aim of the gen-t do Brasil project is to recruit 200,000 volunteers from different regions of the country, who will share their health and behavioral data and donate blood for plasma storage and DNA sequencing.

About gen-t

The company was born in 2021, from the meeting between scientists and investors committed to including the Brazilian people in the era of Precision Medicine and thus creating the conditions for everyone to know themselves and fully exercise their transformative potential. At the head of biotech is Lygia da Veiga Pereira, who has a PhD in Human Genetics from Mount Sinai Graduate School in New York, is a researcher of the human genome and, because she understands the importance of increasing the diversity of genomes in the world, decided to found gen-t. She is also a full professor of Human Genetics at the University of São Paulo.