NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – British molecular diagnostics company Myconostica has raised £1 million ($1.98 million) to close out a round of Series C financing, according to Amphion Innovations, which owns around 23 percent of the firm.
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Myconostica is a University of Manchester spin-out that is developing a molecular diagnostic test for life-threatening fungal infections. It has raised a total of £5.4 million ($10.7 million) in the Series C round, Amphion said.
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The final £1 million to close out the round came from the UMIP Premier Fund, which paid £40 per share for its stake in the company.
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In April, the company raised £3.9 million from Amphion, the French company Innoven Partenaires, and other unnamed international and UK-based investors.
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The Series C round is tabbed to support commercialization of the company’s first diagnostic, which simultaneously tests for Aspergillus and Pneumocystis, as well as its second product, a fungal DNA extraction system.
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Amphion said in April that those products were in the process of CE marking in Europe, and that Myconostica expects to launch a product or products in the US in the fourth quarter of 2008.
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The Aspergillus and Pneumocystis fungi can cause fungal pneumonia, which the company said is the leading cause of infectious death in leukemia and is the second most common first manifestation of AIDS. The test can detect these fungal infectious in less than four hours, according to the company.