Susan Tousi Joins Vizgen as Scientific Advisor

Innovator in single-cell spatial transcriptomics announces Scientific and Technical Advisory Board, introduces new advisor, Susan Tousi, Chief Commercial Officer of Illumina

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vizgen, the life science company dedicated to improving human health by visualizing single-cell spatial genomics information, today announced the establishment of a new Scientific and Technical Advisory Board (SAB) to support Vizgen’s vision to bring the most advanced spatial-omics tools to the life science research community. In addition to Vizgen’s current scientific consultants, Susan Tousi, Chief Commercial Officer at Illumina, will join the SAB.

“The Vizgen Scientific and Technical Advisory Board brings together a group of world-class leaders in life sciences technology to address the growing demand for single-cell spatial genomics research,” said Terry Lo, President and CEO of Vizgen. “We are especially excited to welcome Susan to this exceptional advisory board where she will be able to apply her many experiences building market leading platforms in the field of genomics.”

Susan Tousi brings to Vizgen’s SAB more than 25 years of R&D and business leadership experience at Fortune 100 technology companies, most recently in the life sciences industry. Currently at Illumina, Susan oversees global sales, commercial operations, and commercial strategy and enablement. Previously Susan led product development for Illumina as Chief Product Officer where she delivered Illumina’s most impactful decade of product launches and significantly contributed to the company’s future growth strategy. The products developed under Susan’s guidance have enabled customers to reach new levels of genomics innovation in basic and clinical research, including groundbreaking product lines to advance COVID-19 and oncology studies. Prior to Illumina, Susan held leadership positions at Eastman Kodak and Hewlett-Packard. Susan has received numerous awards in business and technology including being elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2018 and being named one of the 50 Top Diverse Leaders by the California Diversity Council in 2020.

“The genomics field has taken off over the past 20 years, with scientists constantly uncovering new applications in the clinic and at the bench. Now we’re learning how much more can be achieved when we capture the spatial component along with genomic data,” said Susan. “I’m thrilled to join a team with decades of collective experience to help Vizgen realize its potential to empower scientists to reach new heights in their genomics research.”

Other members of the SAB include: Xiaowei Zhuang, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and David B. Arnold Professor of Science at Harvard University; Jeffery Moffitt, Assistant Professor in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston’s Children Hospital and the Department of Microbiology at Harvard Medical School; and David Walt, Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Wyss Institute. All three are distinguished inventors of ground-breaking technologies and have been working closely with Vizgen’s R&D leadership team as co-founders and scientific consultants.

“Vizgen is generating tremendous excitement within the field because it is uniquely positioned to meet the escalating demand for high-plex, single cell spatial genomics data,” said Walt. “I look forward to working with Susan and the experienced scientific leaders on the SAB and Vizgen’s growing leadership team to maximize the potential of the MERSCOPE Platform and support the growth of the company’s cutting-edge technology.”

About MERSCOPE

Vizgen’s MERSCOPE^TM Platform is the only integrated solution for running MERFISH experiments, and the first complete platform for single-cell spatial genomics. The instrument is flexible and amenable to a large variety of sample or tissue types. It is also accompanied by a custom gene panel design portal, reagents and consumables, an analytical computer, and data visualization software. The MERSCOPE Platform offers a user-friendly workflow facilitating each step of a MERFISH experiment, from sample preparation, to measurement, and finally data visualization and analysis. Together these features enable the spatial profiling of hundreds of individual transcripts within hundreds of thousands of cells in a single instrument run.

About Vizgen

Vizgen is dedicated to pioneering the next generation of genomics, providing tools that demonstrate the possibilities of in situ single cell spatial genomics, setting the standard for the spatial genomics field. These tools are enabling researchers to gain new insight into the biological systems that govern human health and disease with spatial context. The company's MERSCOPE^TM Platform enables massively multiplexed, genome-scale nucleic acid imaging with high accuracy and unrivaled detection efficiency at subcellular resolution. MERSCOPE provides transformative insight into a wide range of tissue-scale basic research and translational medicine in oncology, immunology, neuroscience, infectious disease, developmental biology, cell and gene therapy, and is an essential tool for accelerating drug discovery and development. For more information, go to www.vizgen.com. Connect on social media Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Contacts

Media Contact:
Kate Proudfoot
CG Life
kproudfoot@CGLife.com

Vizgen Contact:
Brittany Auclair
Vizgen
Brittany.auclair@vizgen.com