Suzanne Youngkin shared the goals of the W+g initiative focused on wellbeing and workforce in Virginia during her March 30th visit to AMPEL BioSolutions, a women-owned business founded, headquartered and growing in Charlottesville. The focus of AMPEL’s business is management of human health with genomic blood and biopsy tests that provide decision support the right drug for the right person at the right time. Mrs. Youngkin met with the diverse R&D team to discuss AMPEL’s LuGENE blood test for Lupus patients to predict flares and options for therapy. Upcoming tests were discussed including WellGENE to predict inflammation state with the goal of overall wellness. The majority of AMPEL’s workforce are trained in STEM fields at Virginia universities.
The First Lady of Virginia reminded AMPEL of her announcement last fall “I’m passionate about coming alongside aspiring and talented Virginians to equip them in their careers“.
“Over the course of the last 8 years, the UVA Career Ctr has worked closely with AMPEL to train & develop 50+ interns across engineering & life sciences. Many have converted to full-time hires & have stayed in the Virginia workforce. AMPEL is one of our strongest biotech partners in the community,”
– David Lapinski, Dir UVA Career Center.
“Undergrad Biomedical Engineering students at UVA have benefitted tremendously over the years from performing their senior thesis Capstone projects with the AMPEL team. Our students learn to apply data science approaches to biomedical problems, developing invaluable skills that have prepared them to land their dream job after graduation. Over 50% of UVA BME students are women & Amrie Grammer PhD has been a phenomenal mentor and role model for our next generation of scientists,”
Shayn Peirce-Cottler PhD, Chair of UVA Biomedical Engineering.
AMPEL BioSolutions is a precision medicine company commercializing a development pipeline of CLIA-certified gene expression tests for blood or tissue samples that provide clinical decision support by determining disease status, identifying molecular pathway and predicting drug options. AMPEL’s technology is a cloud-based platform that hosts proprietary DNA/RNA analytic tools and machine learning algorithms covered by 35+ filed/pending patents and 90+ peer-reviewed publications. Machine learning predictions are fueled by coverage of 95% of all known genes and an exclusive curated database of >20,000 gene expression profiles with rich clinical data. Disease areas for AMPEL’s precision medicine test portfolio include Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Fibromyalgia, Psoriasis, Scleroderma, Atopic Dermatitis, Nephrology, Cardiovascular, Wellness, Autism, Sjogren’s Syndrome, Lung Cancer and COVID (SARS-Cov2). In 2022, AMPEL BioSolutions was elected to the Coalition for 21st Century Precision Medicine. And in 2023, AMPEL was ranked by Nature in the top five Precision Medicine Companies with respect to the impact of published science.