Mr. Mittalman, CEO of Othrum, said his company has received more than $400,000 from philanthropic donors. According to Crunchbase, the start-up has raised $28.5 million from institutional investors in order to round up the market around this innovative exploratory technology. Founded in 2018 in The Woodlands, Texas, the company now has 30 employees, Mittalman said, including five full-time genealogical researchers, and will soon move to a new building, with a laboratory four times its current size. . ,
Othrum’s pitch is simple: Government labs lack the expensive equipment needed to process DNA evidence — cigarette butts, blood-stained clothing, bone — that could be decades old, perishable or made of inhumane material. may be mixed with. For now, private labs must work to create genetic profiles that are compatible with those generated from a consumer’s saliva, more easily. Then forensic genetic genealogists must do the time-consuming labor of sorting through third cousins ​​and population records. Finally, a further DNA test is usually needed to confirm a suspicious match.
Othrum aspires to be the executives’ one-stop shop for the entire process. “Once they see it, they never look back,” said Mr. Mittalman.
The company created a site called DNASolves to tell horrific crimes and tragic John and Jane Do stories — with catchy names like “Christmas Tree Lady” and “Angel Baby” — to help people fund budget-strapped police departments. To encourage them, so that they can rent Othrum. A competitor, Parabon NanoLabs, created a similar site called JusticeDrive, which has raised about $30,000.
In addition to the money, Othrum encouraged supporters to donate their DNA, a request that some critics called unreasonable, saying that donors should contribute to a database readily available to all investigators.
“Some people are too nervous to put their DNA into a common database,” said Mr Mittelman, who declined to say how big his database is. “We are purpose built for law enforcement.”
Carla Davis has donated her DNA as well as the DNA of her daughter and son-in-law. Her husband refused.
