Mike Lynch-backed data medicine firm raises $15 million

LONDON, Dec 16 (Reuters) - Sophia Genetics, a data-driven medicine company backed by British entrepreneur Mike Lynch, has raised $15 million of new funding from investors including Omega Pharma founder Marc Coucke to grow its genetic analysis platform.

Based in Switzerland, the company's technology has been used by more than 100 hospitals in Europe to support the diagnosis of 25,000 cancer patients since it launched in April (LSE: 0N69.L - news) 2014, Lynch said, and patient numbers are growing at 400 percent a year.

He said the cost of sequencing DNA had fallen from millions of dollars a few years ago to a couple of hundred dollars today, and Sophia had developed algorithms to analyse the data.

"It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) gives you a much better idea of which drugs are going to work and how you stop the cancer coming back," Lynch said.

Lynch, who founded and led software firm Autonomy before it was sold to Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ - news) in 2011 in a deal that soured a year later, first invested in Sophia through his Invoke Capital venture capital fund about 18 months ago.

(Reporting by Paul Sandle, editing by David Evans)