Our Beginnings

BreakSight, Inc spun out of the research and findings discovered in the laboratory of Dr. Eric Brown at the University of Pennsylvania. As part of Ph.D. thesis work performed from 2011 and continued through her post-doctoral work, Nishita Shastri developed and honed a procedure to tag and retrieve DNA double-strand break ends from the genome of cells experiencing strenuous levels of DNA damage.

 

With the help of talented players at Penn, rigorous bioinformatic analyses of next-generation sequencing (NGS) data produced from this technique critically identified peaks representing DNA breaks in the genome and unraveled the patterns of DNA sequences associated with breakage. This technique, called BrITL, revealed intriguing findings, some of which are described in Molecular Cell - "Genome-wide identification of structure-forming repeats as principle sites of fork collapse upon ATR inhibition".

 

In realizing the broader applicability of BrITL, BreakSight, Inc was founded to provide similar services to customers interested in making their own genome-wide discoveries on sites of DNA breakage in their cell and therapeutic models.