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GNA Biosolutions Closes $6.7M Series B Financing

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – German molecular diagnostics firm GNA Biosolutions said today that it has closed a E6 million ($6.7 million) Series B financing round.

New investor Robert Bosch Venture Capital led the financing. Other new investors include SHS Gesellschaft für Beteiligungsmanagement GmbH, b-to-v Partners, and UnternehemerTUM-Fonds, and join existing shareholders Mey Capital Matrix, KfW, and company founders.

GNA will use the funds to bring its first product, the Pharos400 instrument, to market. The Pharos400 features GNA's laser-based PCR technology for thermal cycling and fluorescence-free real-time readout of results. The system will also feature highly integrated eight-plex diagnostic cartridges intended to enable relatively untrained hospital workers to quickly and easily obtain meaningful results. According to GNA, the platform is expected to be able to perform DNA tests in 15 minutes or less. GNA said that it will focus on courting university hospitals as its first customers.

In February, the company said that it had embarked on a two-year collaborative project funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative to develop its laser-based PCR technology into a diagnostic test for Ebola virus. Company Co-founder Lars Ullerich also told GenomeWeb in February that the company has developed a qPCR assay for Staphylococcus aureus and antibiotic resistance.

Munich-based GNA spun out of the Institute for Photonics and Optoelectronics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in 2010. It is located in the Innovation and Start-Up Center for Biotechnology in Martinsried, near Munich.

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