NEW YORK – Cardea Bio said on Tuesday that it has raised $6.5 million in an extension of its Series A financing round, bringing the total the company has raised in this Series A round to more than $20 million.
The new capital infusion was led by the life sciences and biotechnology focused investor 3E Bioventures Capital and was joined by existing investors. Cardea will use the proceeds to further develop its Transistor platform, significantly expand mass manufacturing, and further grow its commercial partnerships.
Cardea's graphene-based biology-gated Transistor platform uses ultra-sensitive and direct detection of molecular analytes for use-case-specific multi-omics analysis, without requiring normal sample preparations and amplification steps such as PCR or protein labeling. The technology can be developed to measure disease-specific nucleic acids, proteins, and small molecules in the same sample at the same time, the company said. It can also measure molecular analyte signals over time.
"We believe the opportunity of near real-time digital insight to molecular multi-omics is massive and represents a paradigm shift away from the old ways and bottlenecks," Cardea CEO Michael Heltzen said in a statement. "With a world class team specializing in multi-disciplinary solutions, and after seven years of hard work, our graphene-based Cardean transistors and analysis infrastructure is finally ready for product implementation."
In September, the company said it had raised $7.5 million in the first close of a Series A2 financing round.