NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Food safety testing firm Sample6 announced yesterday that it has raised $12.5 million in a Series C financing round, bringing the total of various investments in the company to date to $32 million.
The latest financing round was led by Acre Venture Partners, and included Valley Oak Investments, Caanan Partners, and Cultivian Sandbox Ventures.
Sample6 said that it would use the proceeds to scale-up commercialization of its food safety products, which include the Detect/L assay for identifying Listeria contamination, and the Sample6 Control analytics system — a cloud-based software platform for planning, executing, remediating, and analyzing food safety pathogens.
"Food safety and pathogen testing is in desperate need of innovation and transformation," Sam Kass, a partner at Acre Venture and a Sample6 board member, said in a statement. "Sample6's synthetic biology technology platform is exactly the disruption that is needed."
Sample6's core technology, dubbed BioIllumination, involves treating a food sample with an engineered bacteriophage that produces luciferase in the presence of a target pathogen. Samples are then analyzed for luciferase expression using a luminometer and proprietary software. Last year, the company published data detailing the technology and the Dectect/L assay.
In conjunction with the Series C, the company added that Co-founder and Vice President of Research Michael Koeris has been appointed CEO, replacing Tim Curran who will remain a strategic advisor.