Backed by MassChallenge, the Boston startup is making it possible to talk to your DNA.

I decided to build something that could help people everywhere make life-saving discoveries from their own DNA.”
— Alex Kotlar, PhD, Bystro’s CEO and co-founder

BOSTON, MA, UNITED STATES, November 18, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- At MassChallenge this year, a group of Boston founders is doing something transformative: helping people actually talk to their DNA. Their startup, Bystro AI (www.bystro.io), is launching its next-generation platform, currently in use by large academic centers, that turns the complex world of genomics into something searchable, conversational, and clear.

Bystro allows anyone to type a question and receive an answer directly from their own genetic data. Think Google Search for your genome, built on grounded agentic AI, rather than guesswork.

“This effort is personal,” said Alex Kotlar, PhD, Bystro’s CEO and co-founder. “I was born 65 miles from Chernobyl. My mother and I were exposed to radioactive fallout and fled to the United States with $400 and hope for a better future. After a cluster of cancers in my family, I decided to build something that could help people everywhere make life-saving discoveries from their own DNA.”

Co-founded with Dr. Thomas Wingo MD, Associate Director of the University of California Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, along with scientists and entrepreneurs from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Emory University, and Emerson College, the Bystro AI team has taken a novel approach – developing a system that understands how to analyze your genetic data, rather than hallucinating answers. It has been trained to utilize the same tools and techniques that are currently accessible only to state-of-the-art teams of statistical geneticists and computer scientists.

According to Dr. Wingo, “Bystro reflects how clinical and population genetics is practiced today. Answers are grounded in scientific data with clear explanations of what is known and what is uncertain. When patients understand their results, clinicians can work far more effectively with them.”

Bystro AI is currently in use by major academic centers like Emory University, achieving the incredibly high bar of reliability necessary for academic research. Unlike large language models that are trained to produce fluent but hallucination-prone text, Bystro’s foundation is structured science, not speculation.

“With Bystro AI, the team has created a system that finally makes genome-scale interpretation both accessible and scientifically responsible,” said David J. Cutler, PhD, Professor of Human Genetics and Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine, and a leading statistical geneticist. “It is a meaningful step toward everyday genomic care.”

The team is now opening up this groundbreaking technology to everyone, to help people explore their health and genetics. Mason Alban, Bystro’s Chief Revenue Officer and an Emerson College alumnus who once trained as an actor before turning to AI-driven genomics, sees the platform as both accessible and rigorous at all three service levels.

“It is not the most obvious path from rehearsing lines to rewriting science,” Alban said. “But that is the beauty of Bystro. We have made something intuitive enough for anyone, even someone like me, to explore their biology, while still being powerful enough for researchers to discover new therapies.”

By making genomics simple, conversational, and visual, Bystro AI bridges the gap between data and discovery. It empowers clinicians, researchers, and eventually patients to ask and answer the most important questions about health, disease, and the future of medicine.

“For most of my life, genomics felt like a closed language spoken only in a few elite labs,” said Alex Kotlar, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Bystro AI. “With Bystro, anyone with a genome and a question can start a conversation with their own biology. That is the future we are opening to the public today.”

For more information visit www.bystro.io.

About Bystro AI
Bystro AI (www.bystro.io) is an AI-native biomedical research platform that enables precision medicine at petabyte scale. Its Grounded Agentic AI interprets natural language questions, analyzes genomic and clinical datasets, and delivers actionable insights in seconds. Bystro AI is supported by philanthropic funding and the MassChallenge HealthTech Accelerator.

Jake Duhaime
Bystro
+1 617-285-8087
email us here

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