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Cathy Tie

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Cathy Tie
Born (1996-04-19) 19 April 1996 (age 30)
China
Known forThiel Fellowship, Ranomics, Cervin
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese铁颖[1]
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinTiě yǐng

Cheng Cheng "Cathy" Tie[2] is a Canadian entrepreneur, currently acting as the chief executive officer and co-founder of Origin Genomics[3]. A Thiel Fellow,[4] Tie also founded Ranomics, a genetic screening company, and Locke Bio.[5] Ranomics and Locke are both based in Toronto. She also serves as a member of the Association Board at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory[6]

Early life and education

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Tie's family moved from China to Canada when she was four years old.[7] Her father has a master's degree in chemical engineering, but she describes both parents as "entrepreneurs."[8] Growing up in Mississauga, Ontario,[4] she attended the Glenforest Secondary School (International Baccalaureate Diploma Program).[9]

At 15, she worked on an immunology project with researchers at the University of Toronto,[7] which she published the next year in the Canadian Young Scientist Journal. She was amongst the authors of a related paper published after her departure, by large team, in 2018.[10]

Tie started studying Bioinformatics at Trinity College[11] but abandoned her studies after less than a year[7]. In that period, she worked at Mount Sinai Hospital, in the genetic research laboratory of Frederick Roth.[8] After hearing about a competition for a biotech startup, she teamed up with Leo Wan, a graduate student in Roth's lab, to create a business plan for a genomics start-up. They later presented their business plan to IndieBio, an accelerator run by SOSV, who gave them $100,000 of funding. In 2014, Tie left college after less than a year of studies, to work on the project in San Francisco with IndieBio.[12] In 2015, Tie was granted a Thiel Fellowship,[4][13] which encourages undergraduates to leave college and instead build a startup company.

Career

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Tie founded Ranomics as its CEO in 2015. In a JLabs profile,[5] Tie explained that the company's focus was to investigate variants of unknown significance (VUS) that caused genetic tests to fail or misdiagnose patients. Ranomics worked for external genetic testing firms in a business-to-business arrangement to analyze oncogene mutations.[7][14][15] In 2016, Ranomics published a database of 2,000 variants of the BRCA1 gene, whose mutants are tied to breast and ovarian cancer. Clinicians who detected an unknown variant could get it tested by Ranomics, in comparison with functionality data for these 2,000 variants, in order to predict if the new one is harmful or benign.[16]

In 2018, Tie was named a partner in Cervin Ventures, an early-stage venture firm based in San Francisco.[17][18] In 2019, Tie founded Locke Bio, a telemedicine and data-mining company based in Toronto that offers online telemedicine and telepharmacy services to consumers while building health datasets.[19][20] In 2020, Tie and Locke Bio published a free online COVID-19 assessment tool that allowed people to check their symptoms online by filling out an online symptom questionnaire and consulting with a doctor over video chat.[21][22]

In August 2025, Tie co-founded Manhattan Genomics —originally called the Manhattan Project when the company first launched in August—, a company whose goal, according to Tie, was disease correction, not enhancement.[15] Manhattan Genomics shut down four months later in December 2025.[23]

Personal life

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In April 2025, Tie and He Jiankui stated that they married in Beijing.[2][24] On 24 July 2025, Tie announced on X that He and she are separated.[25]

Awards

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In 2015, Tie was selected as a Thiel Fellow. That same year, she and Ranomics co-founder Leo Wan won a $100K USD incubator mentorship through SOSV's incubator IndieBio.[26][12] In 2017, the Kairos Society chose Ranomics as one of its "Kairos 50" for "improving the understanding of human genetics."[27] In 2018, Forbes magazine listed Tie as one of its Healthcare "30 under 30".[28] In 2019, Forbes also included Tie among its "30 under 30" innovators in Canada.[17]

References

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  1. ↑ "贺建奎前妻发起新曼哈顿计划，目标改变人类". 腾讯新闻. 8 September 2025. Retrieved 13 April 2026.
  2. 1 2 Chen, Caiwei; Regelado, Antonio (23 March 2025). "Meet Cathy Tie, Bride of "China's Frankenstein"". MIT Technology Review.
  3. ↑ Kleeman, Jenny (30 May 2026). "'There is no way to stop this': 'Biotech Barbie' Cathy Tie on her mission to genetically modify babies". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 9 June 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 Otis, Daniel (5 June 2015). "Four young Canadians ditch school for $100K fellowships". The Star. Archived from the original on 6 June 2015. Retrieved 27 November 2018.
  5. 1 2 Johnson, Johnson &. "International Women's Day". J&J JLabs. Johnson & Johnson. Archived from the original on 12 November 2018. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  6. ↑ "CSHL Association Board". Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Retrieved 11 March 2026.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Kavilanz, Parija (6 August 2018). "At 18, she launched a startup. At 22, she's blazing a trail in the VC world". CNN. Archived from the original on 28 November 2018. Retrieved 27 November 2018.
  8. 1 2 Dingman, Shane (5 June 2015). "Record number of Canadians take $100,000 to drop out of school". Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on 5 June 2015. Retrieved 27 November 2018.
  9. ↑ "Cathy Tie: Characterizing RNF20 and RNF40 in Class Switching of B Cells". Youth Science Canada. 2013. Archived from the original on 3 July 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  10. ↑ Sun, Song; Yang, Fan; Tan, Guihong; Costanzo, Michael; Oughtred, Rose; Hirschman, Jodi; Theesfeld, Chandra; Bansal, Pritpal; Sahni, Nidhi (14 March 2016). "An extended set of yeast-based functional assays accurately identifies human disease mutations". Genome Research. 26 (5): 670–680. doi:10.1101/gr.192526.115. ISSN 1088-9051. PMC 4864455. PMID 26975778.
  11. ↑ Rogers, Bruce (12 August 2022). "Cathy Tie Builds Locke Bio To Be 'Shopify' For Health Industry". Forbes.
  12. 1 2 Wang, Sandy (19 January 2015). "U of T undergrad secures $100,000 for startup". The Varsity. Retrieved 27 November 2018.
  13. ↑ Leber, Jessica. "Meet the Last "Class" of Thiel Fellows". Fast Company. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  14. ↑ "Ontario-developed technology for screening variant libraries comes of age - Ontario Genomics". Ontario Genomics. 18 January 2018. Retrieved 13 November 2018.
  15. 1 2 "Resolve the Genome's Known Unknowns". GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News. 30 December 2016. Archived from the original on 14 November 2018. Retrieved 13 November 2018.
  16. ↑ Fletcher, Bevin (2 May 2016). "Biotech Startup Provides Functional Studies on Thousands of Breast Cancer Gene Variants". Start Up Here Toronto. Retrieved 3 January 2021.
  17. 1 2 Coyne, Marley; Wilson, Alexandra (10 October 2019). "Best Of Canada: These Are The Forbes Under 30 Innovators You Need To Know". Forbes. Retrieved 3 January 2021.
  18. ↑ Venture, Cervin. "Cervin Ventures Team". Cervin Ventures. Cervin. Archived from the original on 12 November 2018. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  19. ↑ Pitchbook profile of Locke Bio
  20. ↑ Locke Bio website
  21. ↑ Davidson, Sonya (6 April 2020). "19Check.com COVID-19 health assessment tool developed by Torontonian". Toronto Guardian. Archived from the original on 6 August 2020. Retrieved 31 December 2020.
  22. ↑ "Canada's Digital Response to COVID-19". BornDigital.com. 17 March 2020. Archived from the original on 13 August 2020. Retrieved 3 January 2021.
  23. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/30/there-is-no-way-to-stop-this-biotech-barbie-cathy-tie-on-her-mission-to-genetically-modify-babies
  24. ↑ Berkman, Johanna (10 August 2025). "The Bride of 'Chinese Frankenstein'—and the Race to Make Designer Babies". The Free Press.
  25. ↑ Tie, Cathy (24 July 2025). "Hello..." Twitter.
  26. ↑ Kosner, Anthony Wing. "IndieBio Will Accelerate Synthetic Biology To Tech Startup Speed". Forbes. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  27. ↑ "50 Startups Aimed at Changing the World Join Kairos Society". TechCo. 2 May 2017. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  28. ↑ "30 Under 30 - Healthcare 2018: Cathy Tie". Forbes. Retrieved 11 November 2018.
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