New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Sema4 shows off its new Stamford lab
STAMFORD — Health care information firm Sema4’s executives believe their business is “well positioned” after recently raising $121 million in new funding and achieving an overall valuation of more than $1 billion.
With scores of employees on their way to their new building in Stamford’s Waterside section, they see their organization as welllocated, too.
The company will soon launch its new laboratory at 62 Southfield Ave. The approximately 70,000square-foot hub will focus on testing for women’shealth services and house about 160 employees now based at Sema4’s lab at Mount Sinai Health System in Manhattan. It will complement the company’s main offices about a mile and a half east in Stamford’s South End.
“We see this as an ideal location for us,” said Lisa Edelmann, Sema4’s chief diagnostics officer. “It’s going to give us much more space and much more functionality.”
At 62 Southfield, Sema4 has taken over and entirely renovated a building dating to 1904 that once operated as a chocolate factory. It has built out about 25,000 square feet for its lab operations, compared with only about 3,500 square feet of usable lab space at Mount Sinai.
In 2017, Sema4 was spun off from Mount Sinai into its own firm and immediately opened its headquarters at 333 Ludlow St. Reproductive-based health testing and analysis constitutes its main focus.
In addition to the employees who will relocate from Manhattan, Sema4 plans to hire another 30 to 40 in the next few months.
“We hope to have this fully operating and functional by the end of November,” said founder and CEO Eric Schadt.
Company officials on Friday welcomed local and state officials to tour the new space. Members of the group, who included Sen. Chris Murphy, Congressman Jim Himes, Mayor David Martin and state Reps. Matt Blumenthal and David Michel, said they were impressed by the scope and sophistication of the lab, which is already outfitted with robotic testing equipment and other apparatus.
They noticed the sweeping vistas, too.
“This is quite the advertisement for working here,” Murphy said, as he snapped on his smartphone a shot of the waterfront panorama through one of the lab windows.
The second-term Democrat has been tracking Sema4’s progress for some time. In July, he named the company his Innovator of the Month.
Sema4 announced the lab project in April 2018, with a commitment to add more than 400 jobs in the state in the next five years.
To support the expansion, the state Department of Economic and Community Development gave Sema4 a $6 million loan. In December 2015, DECD awarded the company a $9.5 million loan to create 145 jobs.
Sema4 has about 215 employees who are based at 333 Ludlow St., and about 75 at its other laboratory, in Branford, according to recently provided headcounts.
“We’re partnering with UConn, and we’re bringing students into our lab to train them,” said Emmett Higgins, Sema4’s vice president of laboratory of operations. “And the more that we’re here investing in the community, we hope the community continues to invest in us.”
In Branford, Sema4 has responded to the coronavirus crisis by building out a testing program with the capacity to process about 15,000 tests daily.
The firm has also expanded into antibody testing to identify people who have been exposed and whose immune systems have responded to the coronavirus, with the ability to run each day several thousand of those tests.
Branford employees also carry out oncological testing services.
Among other new initiatives, it has launched Sema4 Signal, a group of products and services providing “data-driven precision oncology solutions.”
Across all its operations, Sema4 has amassed nearly 10 million patient records, according to company officials.
The company’s name refers to semaphore — a system used to send signals. In previous statements, the company has said it aims to “discern signal from noise across trillions of data points” to gain insights into human health.
“We want to be able to offer solutions to every health system in the country,” Schadt said.
The recent $121 million infusion from investors, including the state-chartered investment agency Connecticut Innovations and Greenwich-based Oak HC/FT, has helped Sema4 to pursue its goals.
Along its fundraising, Murphy asked “as you think about that kind of scale, what do you need from policymakers to make that easier?”
“Education is a big part of that,” Schadt replied. “And commuting is super important, including making the roads easier to navigate.”