Company History
KromaTiD Inc. is a small biotech start-up company established in 2007 by five founding members with a big vision – creating innovative solutions for chromosome analysis. Specifically, KromaTiD sought to greatly improve resolution of detection of a specific and historically difficult, if not impossible, to see chromosome aberration – inversions.
KromaTiD’s roots go back to the discovery of Chromosome Orientation Fluorescence In situ Hybridization (CO-FISH; 1993), a strand-specific/single-sided modification of standard FISH. The CO-FISH technique is elegant in its simplicity, yet powerful in its application, as it provides information not available by any other means. CO-FISH was originally targeted to highly repetitive sequences, for example centromeres and telomeres, where one single-stranded probe hybridized to many targets, making the one-sided signals visible under the microscope. The next generation of CO-FISH – many single-stranded probes to unique sequences along the entire length of the chromosome – is what KromaTiD is all about.
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Although development of single-stranded probes to unique sequences is (and remains) an extremely challenging endeavor, the release and refinement of the human genome sequence opened a new realm of possibilities and made such a feat plausible. During a fateful ride on the “tube” in London, founders of what was to become KromaTiD Inc., stumbled upon this realization – and so was born “chromatid painting”.
Today, KromaTiD is a startup company based on licensed technology from Colorado State University (CSU) and University of Texas’s Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, TX. KromaTiD is primarily funded through a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Additional support has come from CSU College Research Council, CSU Research Foundation, CSU Ventures, CSU Cancer Supercluster, State of Colorado Office of Economic Development Bioscience Evaluation Grant Program, and the National Institutes of Health.
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