Lithuanian multiomics data analysis company VUGENE bases CSO in Cambridge

Lithuanian multiomics data analysis pioneer VUGENE reveals that its Chief Scientific Officer, Ingrida Olendraitė, is permanently locating to Cambridge in response to growing interest from both the region’s academic and industrial research bases. This move follows a recent €1 million funding by the company.

Ingrida Olendraitė. Photograph by Andrej Vasilenko.

Founded in 2021 by Juozas Gordevičius, VUGENE has developed a platform able to integrate biological data from all sources – transcriptomics, (epi)genomics, metabolomics, proteomics involving spatial and single-cell methods.

It has rapidly built a strong international R & D customer base across biotech, pharma and academia including Corewell Health, Barrow Neurological Institute, Epigenetic Clock Development Foundation, RUSH University Medical Center, rAAVen Therapeutics and Biocrates.

Ingrida is no stranger to the UK, where she moved to study genetics of human disease and then a PhD in Computational Biology at University of Cambridge, exploring the discovery and molecular biology of RNA viruses.

During the COVID-19 pandemic she was an adviser to the Lithuanian prime minister, initiating the SARS-CoV-2 national surveillance programme on coordinating country-wide virus control measures.

“Our value lies in transforming customer’s multiomics data into functional discoveries – saving time, unwinding complexity and empowering better-informed decisions through continuous collaboration and data exploration,”says Ingrida.

“Already we are seeing many of them making exciting discoveries in a wide range of fields – Neurodegeneration, Cancer, Gene Therapy, Microbial Genomics, Cardiovascular disorders. As a global leader in omics research, Cambridge is a natural focus as we look to expand our activities following the recent funding. I am delighted to start leveraging and expanding my network and help researchers (industry or academia) in the UK to accelerate their discoveries.”

VUGENE is one of the stars of the Baltic nation’s rapidly growing life sciences sector. Currently contributing 2.6 per cent to the country’s GDP, the sector aims to reach five per cent by 2030, a goal that seems achievable given its consistent annual growth of 25 per cent. This is among the fastest in the European Union.

Already this year Lithuanian start-ups such as VUGENE have attracted Euros167.7 million - a five-fold increase over 2024.

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