NEW YORK – Mercy BioAnalytics announced Monday that it closed a $41 million Series A financing round. Novalis LifeSciences led the round, with participation from Sozo Ventures, Hatteras Venture Partners, iSelect Fund, American Cancer Society BrightEdge, Broadway Angels, Labcorp, and Bruker.
Mercy plans to use proceeds from the round to further the development and commercialization of its Mercy Halo high-risk lung cancer screening test and to advance clinical programs for additional indications, including ovarian cancer.
The Natick, Massachusetts-based company presented proof-of-concept data on its Mercy Halo Ovarian Cancer test last year.
The Mercy Halo platform functions through simultaneous detection of multiple cancer-related biomarkers found on the surfaces of tumor-derived extracellular vesicles, which the company says are more abundant and persistent than cell-free DNA.
The firm plans larger clinical studies to validate the assay's performance in these and other indications and intends to present additional data at this month's American Association for Cancer Research conference in Orlando, Florida, and at the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles annual meeting in Seattle in May.
"Mercy is taking a unique approach designed to address the challenges that have plagued early cancer detection liquid biopsy tests that seek to measure tumor-derived DNA," Paul Meister, partner at Novalis LifeSciences and member of Mercy's board of directors, said in a statement.