The Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research enjoyed much more than 15 minutes of fame in late June, as the [Human Genome Project] and [Celera Genomics Corporation] announced their first assemblies of the human genome, the genetic blueprint for a human being.

Whitehead was the single largest contributor to the [Human Genome Project], providing roughly a third of all the sequence assembled by the international consortium of 16 laboratories involved.

Whitehead also laid much of the groundwork needed for the project, by scaling up 20-fold and launching the project's final phase -- sequencing the three billion base pairs that make up the human genome. Over the past year or so, Whitehead's sequencing center produced more than one billion base pairs or DNA letters that went toward assembling the "book of life" announced on June 26.

BETTER, FASTER THAN EXPECTED

Production of genome sequence has skyrocketed over the past year, with more than 60 percent of the sequence having been produced in the past six months alone. During this time, the project consortium has been producing 1,000 bases per second of raw sequence -- seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

The consortium's goal for spring 2000 was to produce a "working draft" version of the human sequence, an assembly containing overlapping fragments that cover approximately 90 percent of the genome and that are sequenced in "working draft" form, i.e., with some gaps and ambiguities. The consortium's ultimate goal is to produce a completely "finished" sequence, i.e. one with no gaps and 99.99 percent accuracy. The target date for this ultimate goal had been 2003, but the final, stand-the-test-of-time sequence will likely be produced considerably ahead of that schedule.

The Human Genome Project consortium centers in six countries have produced far more sequence data than expected (more than 22.1 billion bases of raw sequence data, comprising overlapping fragments totaling 3.9 billion bases and providing seven-fold sequence coverage of the human genome). As a result, the working draft is substantially closer to the ultimate finished form than the consortium expected at this stage.

Although the working draft is useful for most biomedical research, a highly accurate sequence that's as close to perfect as possible is critical for obtaining all the information there is to get from human sequence data. This has already been achieved for chromosomes 21 and 22, as well as for 24 percent of the entire genome.

In a related announcement, Celera Genomics announced that it completed its own first assembly of the human genome DNA sequence.

The public and private projects use similar automation and sequencing technology, but different approaches to sequencing the human genome. The public project uses a "hierarchical shotgun" approach in which individual large DNA fragments of known position are subjected to shotgun sequencing (i.e., shredded into small fragments that are sequenced, and then reassembled on the basis of sequence overlaps). The Celera project uses a "whole genome shotgun" approach, in which the entire genome is shredded into small fragments that are sequenced and put back together on the basis of sequence overlaps.

TRIUMPHANT FEELINGS

Behind all the publicity hoopla was the personal triumph and exhilaration felt by every Whitehead person involved with the project. In fact, for most of them, including the eight representatives from the Genome Center who went to a White House ceremony in Washington, the pride and excitement about a job well done far surpassed any appearance on the "Today" show.

[Eric Steven Lander (born 1957)], professor of biology and director of the Whitehead Genome Center, and Lauren Linton, co-director of its sequencing center, as well as sequencing center team leaders were in the White House East Room as President Clinton and Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair made the historic announcement -- that the "book of life" had been decoded. The room was electric with anticipation as the band played "Hail to the Chief" and announced the President's entrance.

Remarks by President Clinton, Francis Collins (director of the National Human Genome Research Institute) and [Dr. John Craig Venter (born 1946)] (president of [Celera Genomics Corporation]) recognized the work of the thousands of scientists who helped the world reach this milestone.

"We are incredibly happy and feeling a sense of triumph. This is an exciting day, and the credit goes to all the people who worked day and night at a feverish pace both to create the sequencing center and to sequence every last bit of DNA to achieve the goals that we had set for this milestone," said Dr. Linton.

"It's very exciting to be here, to stand here in the White House and be recognized for our accomplishments. It was impressive and overwhelming and totally thrilling," said Nicole Stange-Thomann, leader of the clone preparation and library construction team.

She and several team leaders from Whitehead, including  [Kevin Judd McKernan (born 1973)], Mike Zody, Lisa Kann, Jim Meldrim, Ken Dewar, Will Fitzhugh and Paul McEwan, attended the White House event and the press conference that followed at the Capital Hilton.

MEDIA BLITZ

Back in Cambridge, sequencing center assistant directors Bruce Birren and Chad Nusbaum rallied the troops for a celebration at the Whitehead Genome Center. They also faced huge and unprecedented media interest in the topic, handling dozens of interviews and television broadcasts that followed the announcement. WHDH-TV Channel 7 (the Boston affiliate of NBC) broadcast live from the Whitehead party, and Channels 4 and 56 also descended on the Whitehead sequencing center.

CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, the Discovery Channel and many other national and international TV stations had prepared in advance, taking footage of the sequencing center and conducting interviews in the past several months, and were ready with stories featuring Whitehead soon after the June 26 announcement.

Whitehead was also featured in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Morning News, Time, the Associated Press and many other newspapers and magazines.

While the media attention focused mostly on the sequencing center, some of it also trickled down to the Genome Center's Functional Genomics Group and the main Whitehead Institute on questions regarding functional genomics and other applications of the genome sequence. Media calls came at a frenzied pace as news outlets frantically tried to get Whitehead scientists to appear on shows on short notice.

MIT Professor of Biology and Whitehead member Richard A. Young appeared on MSNBC; Professor and Whitehead director Gerald Fink was on Greater Boston with Emily Rooney; and [Kevin Judd McKernan (born 1973)] (a team leader at the sequencing center) and David Altshuler (a research scientist at the Genome Center and Harvard endocrinologist) were on the Geraldo Rivera show on CNBC. All this happened within the span of just one day (June 26). Media calls continued to pour in all week as reporters did follow-up stories about the Genome Center's accomplishments.

"We deserve to be proud of our accomplishments and bask in this glory as the world's attention focuses on us. The credit goes to all the individuals at the Whitehead Genome Center who have worked hard to make us the flagship center of the Human Genome Project Consortium. Everyone associated with this project should feel proud," said Professor [Eric Steven Lander (born 1957)],.

WOBURN, Mass.- Courtagen Life Sciences, Inc. (“Courtagen”), a privately held life sciences company that provides innovative proteomic and genomic products and services to the life sciences industry, announced today that it has acquired Medicinal Genomics Corporation, with operations in Marblehead, Mass. and Amsterdam, Netherlands (“Medicinal Genomics”). Medicinal Genomics made headlines around the world last August when it announced that it had sequenced the entire genome of Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica, assembling the largest known gene collection of this therapeutic plant. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The acquisition reunites noted genomics pioneers and innovators—the McKernan brothers. Brian McKernan is the Chief Executive Officer of Courtagen and Brendan McKernan is the company’s President. Kevin McKernan, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Medicinal Genomics, will become Courtagen’s Chief Scientific Officer. The three brothers previously comprised the senior management team and were co-founders of Agencourt Bioscience Corporation (“Agencourt”) and Agencourt Personal Genomics, Inc. (“APG”). Agencourt was one of the most successful commercial DNA sequencing companies in the world prior to being sold to Beckman Coulter in 2005. Following this, the three brothers co-founded APG, a technology startup focused on developing SOLiD, a cutting edge next-generation sequencing technology, which was sold to Applied Biosystems in 2006.

“The accomplishments and progress that Kevin has achieved at Medicinal Genomics in such a short period of time are impressive and indicative of Kevin’s drive to create value in the genomics space,” said Brian McKernan. “We believe that Kevin’s groundbreaking work at Medicinal Genomics is completely aligned with Courtagen’s objective of turning sophisticated genomics into tools that will provide real clinical utility. It goes without saying that all three of us are very excited to be working together again.”

Medicinal Genomics, as a wholly owned subsidiary of Courtagen, will apply next-generation sequencing technologies to better understand and elucidate the medical properties of Cannabis. Medicinal Genomics has the largest DNA sequence database of the Cannabis plant and is well positioned to design DNA fingerprinting assays and sequencing services for strain genotyping and medicinal strain development.

Courtagen’s proteomics division has developed the award-winning Avantra® Q400 Biomarker Workstation, which provides clinicians and researchers an affordable, reliable and easy to use microarray imaging platform for biomarker analysis.

• About Courtagen :  Courtagen Life Sciences is a privately held life sciences company that provides innovative proteomic and genomic products, solutions and services to the life sciences industry. Founded by innovators in next-generation sequencing (NGS), genetics, molecular biology, and information science, our company delivers tools that enable researchers and clinicians to make better decisions regarding drug development and patient care. More information can be found at www.courtagen.com.

Courtagen Life Sciences Inc., a venture-backed provider of technology and services to enable "precision medicine," has acquired privately held Medicinal Genomics Corp. to secure resources that will enable it to better elucidate the therapeutic potentials of cannabis.

Courtagen, which has raised roughly $15 million from undisclosed venture and individual investors, acquired Medicinal Genomics for an undisclosed amount. Medicinal Genomics, which recently sequenced the genome of Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica, uses sequencing to explore cannabis's medicinal possibilities. This can be useful to pharmaceutical companies looking to harness these properties for drug development.

The merger, completed in December, reunites a team that has succeeded before, the McKernan brothers. Brian McKernan, Courtagen's chief executive, and Brendan McKernan, Courtagen's president, co-founded Courtagen in 2010. Their brother Kevin was founder and CEO of Medicinal Genomics.

Brian, Kevin and Brendan launched venture-backed Agencourt Bioscience Corp. in 2000 and sold it to Beckman Coulter Inc. in 2005. Before that sale, they started an internal program called Agencourt Personal Genomics Inc. That unit was later spun off to its shareholders and sold to Applied Biosystems Inc. in 2006.

Kevin remained with Applied Bio (now Life Technologies Inc.) and initiated the deal to acquire venture-backed Ion Torrent Systems Inc., which Life Technologies bought in late 2010. After serving as vice president of advanced research and head of research and development for Life Technologies' Ion Torrent division, Kevin left Life Technologies and founded Medicinal Genomics. He is now Courtagen's chief scientific officer.

Courtagen Life Sciences (which changed its name from Avantra Biosciences last year) will have multiple business lines. The medicinal cannabis program from Medicinal Genomics is at the research stage at the moment, but the company sees potential to use its capabilities to help pharmaceutical companies better understand the genetics of cannabis.

Courtagen has also developed an immunoassay system that can be used for point-of-care diagnostic testing. The company intends to work with a partner to help it advance this technology into the Food and Drug Administration-regulated point-of-care market, according to Brian McKernan.

Courtagen already works with pharmaceutical companies looking to uncover the genetic reasons why some people respond or don't respond to a drug. This information also can be used to develop companion diagnostics to identify patients likely to respond to a therapy.

Courtagen also plans to begin providing DNA sequencing and interpretation services to doctors this year through its laboratories. DNA sequencing can be helpful when a patient's diagnosis is unclear. Interpreting data with the help of its proprietary bioinformatics capabilities is an important element of the company's service as well, according to Brian McKernan.

Typically the use of genomics data to tailor treatments to individuals is referred to as "personalized medicine," but "precision medicine" is a better description, Brian McKernan said. Physicians always try to individualize treatment, he said. Protein diagnostics and DNA sequencing are just new tools to enable them to be more precise about the best treatments to use, he said.

Brian McKernan declined to discuss Courtagen's revenue but said the company expects to turn cash-flow positive next year.

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brendan and Kevin McKernan.

Brendan and Kevin, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.

We called our first company – Agencourt. For the historians in the audience, you might know that Agencourt is the name of one of the most important battles between the English and the French in the Hundred Years War. The English were outnumbered 5 to 1 but they won against all odds, for a variety of reasons:
1. They had an advanced technology called the longbow
2. They had an adaptive capacity and the flexibility to change strategies on the fly.
3. Finally King Henry had his band of brothers who were committed and determined to succeed.

Back in the summer of 2000, when we started Agencourt our novel chemistry was our long bow. The name Agencourt was also appropriate because we are a band of brothers and we certainly had passion, although some would have called us naive. We can remember the day we formed the company as if it was yesterday. We had our business plan, our incorporation documents and a small amount of capital to secure the Intellectual Property Kevin developed while at MIT. Once we were able to obtain the patents and raised some capital, we opened the doors for the first 50 customers.

You cannot imagine how surprised we were when we could not find a single customer. We had heard the old saying “If you build it they will come.” Well, we built it, and all we heard were crickets… Nevertheless, we were undaunted and we persevered, but the orders were not coming in fast enough to offset the cost of building the organization and the outlook was pretty bleak.

And then…. we caught a wave.

It turns out other people believed in us as well. Eric Lander from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research Genome Research at MIT needed additional sequencing capacity for a two year period, but they needed a lab that would be operational in just 60 days. It was a difficult project to pull off, but since two years was roughly twice the expected life time of a start up, we took the job.

Not only did we meet the deadline, but also we improved the process so that it was a highly profitable operation. We quickly became the lowest cost, highest quality genomics lab in the world.

Having established our credentials several multinationals showed up, unsolicited, and offered to buy the company. When the offer rolled passed our wildest dreams, we sold the company to Beckman/Coulter, one of the biggest names in the world of Life science. It was a difficult decision to sell because we loved the company. But we were in a very rapidly changing market and we needed to create a worldwide distribution system and invest much more money than we had. We had won the battle but we did not think we had the resources to win a global war.

But the story doesn’t end there. Kevin and his team had been working on a unique idea, on how to radically advance all the present sequencing technology. So before we sold the company we created another… Agencourt Personal Genomics. Kevin said the goal was to cut the cost of sequencing by a factor of 100,000. Some people thought it was impossible. Fortunately for us, they didn’t know Kevin. Within nine months our team had the technology working and again, several industry giants showed up wanting our intellectual property. We eventually sold the company to Applied Biosystems, the largest supplier of sequencing machines in the world.

After selling the company to Applied Biosystem (ABI), Kevin joined ABI to help manage their global DNA sequencing development efforts. During Kevin’s time at ABI, they signed a partnership with TGEN, which sequences patients with cancer. While Kevin was working there, patients started to ask questions about using cannabinoids to treat cancer. He had to admit to them that he had no knowledge about their pharmacological effects at the time, but eventually the questions kept coming. He decided to take a dive into the literature about cannabinoids and he was amazed at what he found. Kevin realized that nobody had fully sequenced cannabis and he was shocked. Kevin quit his job with Applied Biosystems in 2011 and started Medicinal Genomics. During his first year, he sequenced chemdawg, one of the more popular strains available at the time.

Meanwhile, Kevin’s brothers Brendan and Brian built a third venture called Courtagen Life Sciences. Courtagen focused on revolutionizing personal medicine for kids with epilepsy, autism and mitochondrial disease. During our time building Courtagen, we noticed that polymorphisms in cannabinoid receptors strongly correlated with frequent migraines and the onset of certain diseases. Courtagen’s board made the decision to acquire Medicinal Genomics in 2012. Unfortunately, due to legal concerns at the time, we had to put Medicinal Genomics on ice until the Cole Memo was issued in 2013.

Around 2015, the cannabis market really started to take shape with increased legalization. This is when we were finally able to take Medicinal Genomics off ice and invest into it. We started by making microbial testing kits to test for the presence of harmful microbes. We also started working with breeders to improve breeding programs using genetics.

In 2017, our board decided to that the company should shift the core focus of its business to medicinal cannabis genetics and testing. As the company reorients its business to respond to the growing opportunities in the medicinal cannabis industry, the company has made the decision to wind down its diagnostic neurology testing division. The company’s decision to transition out of its diagnostic business was based in part on many challenging industry dynamics such as a poor regulatory and reimbursement landscape for genetic testing, that have made the goal of achieving long term profitability in the diagnostic space extremely difficult.

The cannabis industry is currently the fastest growing industry in the U.S., with 30% compounded annual growth rates. The market is expected to expand significantly in the coming years as more states and countries legalize cannabis for medical and recreational purposes. The rapidly increasing applications of cannabis in mainstream medicine are poised to increase demand for high quality, consistent and safe medicinal cannabis for patients.

Today, Medicinal Genomics is focused on helping help scientist and producers identify genetic traits and detect harmful microbes & pathogens, leading to greater yields, safer cannabis and lower costs. Medicinal Genomics is the industry leader in sequencing the cannabis genome and the genomes of the most destructive cannabis pests known to date, such as Powdery Mildew and Russet Mites. Our proprietary platform has enabled the rapid development of field portable genomic tests, an innovative Cannabis genotyping notarization service utilizing the blockchain and a marker assisted selection service providing Intellectual property management through our cannabis information portal Kannapedia.net.

Committed to advancing the cannabis industry, we have also created an information sharing platform to highlight these technologies and those of worldwide medical and scientific leaders, through the annual CannMed conference series. CannMed gathers the greatest minds in medical cannabis research, where they focus on the intersection of clinical application, medical research, Cannabis based therapeutics, cannabis safety and production.

Our team is excited for the future and we look forward to applying our domain expertise to help advance the scientific understand of the cannabis plant.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Medicinal Genomics – what should we know?

Medicinal Genomics uses its unmatched expertise in cannabis genetics to develop testing technologies that help growers, dispensaries and testing laboratories ensure patients and consumers have access to safety, quality cannabis.

Genetics is beginning to play a bigger role in the cannabis industry, not only for informing breeding decisions but also for sexing plants, detecting harmful microbes, patenting strains and more. Medicinal Genomics Chief Science Officer, Kevin McKernan describes the current state of cannabis genetics and how growers can use genetic technology to improve their business – http://courtagen.wistia.com/medias/91wwqbjxfr

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?

Our success is due to many things but most important, to the hard work and loyalty of our employees who worked with unwavering perseverance to make our firms successful. The winning combination to succeed in business has always included a mix of intellect, dedication, focus and building and maintaining a passionate team.

We would also like to thank our parents, customers and investors. Our mentors and supporters have been instrumental in guiding and properly capitalizing our organizations.

• Elizabeth Holland – VP of HR

• Tim Olcott – VP of operations

• Doug Kennedy – director of CannMed events

• Heather Ebling – Sr. Applications Scientist

• Yvonne Helbert – Sr. Scientist

• Ben Amirault – Marketing Manager

• Kate Landry – Controller

• Zac Eaton – Senior Sales Representative

• Kyle Boyar – Sales Representative

• Blair Beach – Customer Support Specialist

• Denise Marston – Executive Assistant/Office Manager

• Middle initial "J"   (Ancestry.com directory info : [HD004B][GDrive] 

• Whitepages (  [HD004C][GDrive]  )  :    "  'Kevin Judd McKernan'   /   BIRTHDATE :   4/12/1973 (50yrs)  /  LOCATION :   Marblehead, MA "