There is a website called Blame Drew’s Cancer that focuses specifically on raising awareness of cancer. The website aims to raise money for cancer as well. To raise the awareness, Blame Drew’s Cancer has Twitter users paste the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer in their tweets.
Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG foundation is already on board with Blame Drew’s Cancer and today 23andMe announced that they have joined the cause. For every 500 unique tweets that adds the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer and #23andMe, 23andMe will donate $1 to the cause.
23andMe will start donating after the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer is used by the 10,000 person. 23andMe will be donating 5 of their $99 research kits to Blame Drew’s Cancer followers based on a raffle system.
Google has reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that they have invested $2.6 million in the genetic testing startup 23andMe as part of a Series B round of funding. 23andMe was co-founded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s wife Anne Wojcicki.
It is uncertain whether the deal was made directly through Google or through their Ventures subsidiary. The $2.6 million round of fund was part of a $12.6 million Series B round. The other $10 million came from Sergey Brin’s personal wealth of $12 billion. This brings 23andMe’s total funding to about $21.6 million. Other investors include Genentech, New Enterprise Associates, and Mohr Davidow Ventures.
Google owns a minority interest in 23andMe and also plans to lease space to the genetics company. Google wrote in the filing that they took measures to ensure the decision before investing to make the agreement was free of conflict of interest. Sergey Brin was not part of the investment discussions according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
23andMe is a personal genomics and biotech company based in Mountain View, California. 23andMe offers tests for genome-wide, single nucleotide polymorphisms for the cost of $299. 23andMe received $3.9 million investment from Google. Google co-founder is married to 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki.
Today it was announced that 23andMe raised an additional $11 million of a $24.26 million venture round according to a regulatory filing. 23andMe’s first round of funding was $9 million by Google, Genentech, New Enterprise Associates, and Mohr Davidow Ventures.
In this new round, there wasn’t any investor information mentioned. No info on whether Google Ventures or Google.org was part of the investment. 23andMe’s website currently only lists New Enterprise Associates and Google as their investors. If we find out who the investors are, we’ll update with a new post.
