Cathy Tie
Canadian entrepreneur
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cheng Cheng "Cathy" Tie[2] is a Canadian entrepreneur, currently acting as the chief executive officer and co-founder of Manhattan Genomics. A Thiel Fellow,[3] Tie also founded Ranomics, a genetic screening company, and of Locke Bio, a telemedicine company called the "Shopify for healthcare.[4]" both based in Toronto, and serves as a member of the Association Board at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory[5]
Cathy Tie | |||||||
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| Born | 19 April 1996 China | ||||||
| Known for | Thiel Fellowship, Ranomics, Cervin | ||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 铁颖[1] | ||||||
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Background and education
Tie's family moved from China to Canada when she was four years old.[6] Her father has a master's degree in chemical engineering, but she describes both parents as "entrepreneurs."[7] Growing up in Mississauga, Ontario,[3] she attended the Glenforest Secondary School (International Baccalaureate Diploma Program).[8]
At 15, she worked on an immunology project with researchers at the University of Toronto,[6] 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.[9]
Tie started studying Bioinformatics at Trinity College[10] but abandoned her studies after less than a year[6]. In that period, she worked at Mount Sinai Hospital, in the genetic research laboratory of Frederick Roth.[7] 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.[11] In 2015, Tie was granted a Thiel Fellowship,[3][12] which encourages undergraduates to leave college and instead build a startup company.
Career
Tie founded Ranomics as its CEO in 2015. In a JLabs profile,[4] 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.[6][13][14] 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.[15]
In 2018, Tie was named a partner in SF-based Cervin Ventures, an early-stage venture firm based in San Francisco.[16][17] 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.[18][19] In 2020, Tie and Locke Bio published a free online COVID-19 assessment tool that allows people to check their symptoms online by filling out an online symptom questionnaire and consulting with a doctor over video chat.[20][21]
In August 2025, Tie co-founded Manhattan Genomics —originally called the Manhattan Project when the company first launched in August—, a company where Tie says the goal is disease correction, not enhancement.[14] Manhattan Genomics shut down four months later in December 2025.[22]
Personal life
Awards
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.[25][11] In 2017, the Kairos Society chose Ranomics as one of its "Kairos 50" for "improving the understanding of human genetics."[26] In 2018, Forbes magazine listed Tie as one of its Healthcare "30 under 30".[27] In 2019, Forbes also included Tie among its "30 under 30" innovators in Canada.[16]